AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Tenement housing blueprint inside3/15/2024 Still, in its 1902 report, the Tenement House Department noted that “tenement conditions have been found to be so bad as to be indescribable in print,” including “vile privies… cellars full of rubbish… garbage and decomposing fecal matter… dilapidated and dangerous stairs… dangerous old fire traps without fire escapes (and) disease-breeding rags… The cleansing of the Augean Stables was a small task compared to the cleansing of New York’s 82 tenement houses, occupied by nearly three millions of people.” Buildings erected after 1901 were considered “New Law” buildings and had stricter requirements. Subsequent “Old Law” buildings, erected between 18, required slender air shafts for ventilation. The Act of 1867 brought the first “Old Law,” buildings which required fire escapes-most shoddily built. Prior to 1867, tenements known as “Pre-Law” buildings had few strict requirements. The Tenement House Act of 1901, which echoed Riis’ findings and called for reforms, led to the creation of New York City’s Tenement House Department, which issued annual and biennial reports from 1902 through 1937-all of which are housed in the Municipal Library. More than 20 years after the Tenement House Act of 1867, Riis described such horrendous conditions-crowded and dangerous buildings that incubated cholera, malaria and tuberculosis-it resulted in a public outcry and led to an investigation by the Tenement House Committee. Where two families had lived ten moved in.” Presently it was carried up another story, and another. To meet the need for quick, cheap housing, Riis reported that the properties “fell into the hands of real estate agents and boarding house keepers… and in the old garden where the stolid Dutch burgher grew his tulips or early cabbages, a rear house was built, generally of wood, two stories high at first. Buildings that once housed comfortable dwellings were cut up and added onto to accommodate the newly arrived immigrants who swelled the city’s population, eventually quadrupling it from 125,000 in 1820 to just under one million by 1870. The Municipal Library held a copy of Riis’ book, published in 1890, which noted in chilling detail and sickening photos the conditions of Manhattan’s tenement houses.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |