Why Were Tenement Apartments Crowded

Oftentimes, workers in factories could not even afford to buy the finished goods they produced. And so, when it came to housing, tenements in the slums were the only choice. To put things in perspective, by 1900, approximately two-thirds of the New York Metropolis population lived in slums. And while New York City was infamous for its slums, slums existed in every major metropolis hit by industrialization.

Tenement Housing Definition

Tenement housing refers to a blazon of low-income housing that proliferated in the late-19th and early on-20th centuries. Tenement housing began with single-family residences divided into multiple apartments, just soon these residences ran out. To keep up with the demand for housing, contractors began edifice tenement-specific buildings equally well as making additions to existing residences. The goal of tenement buildings was to fit as many families in every bit possible while spending as piddling money equally possible. Every bit a result, the conditions in tenement buildings were frequently horrific and unlivable.

Tenement Housing in The Gilded Historic period

The Gilded Age was a time period in American history spanning from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century. Information technology was a time of keen economic growth, merely also of corruption and gross inequality. An increase in heavy industry allowed the robber barons to accumulate farthermost wealth but this did non trickle down to the workers. This was extremely detrimental every bit workers' wages remained the aforementioned as the toll of living rose effectually them.

The American City

During the Gilded Age, American cities underwent a major change in composition and conditions. Previously, cities had been relatively modest, and people could walk to their place of work. While there were pockets of poverty, these areas were small. With the Aureate Age, these pockets of poverty exploded in size and became extremely overcrowded slums. In these impoverished areas, there were loftier rates of illness and crime.

At the same time workers were struggling to make ends meet, a new middle course was emerging with disposable income. With their newfound wealth, middle-class families left the over-populated, and often filthy, metropolis centers for suburbia. Landlords chop-chop bought up these abandoned residences and converted them into multiple apartments for the everyman toll possible, often leading to dangerous living weather condition.

The Growth of Tenement Housing and Slums

Because of the opportunities created by industrialization, many citizens from rural areas migrated to city centers for work. At the same time, immigrants from Europe were flooding into urban centers hoping for a better life. Equally a result, cities across the land boomed in population. Frequently, working-class and immigrant families found themselves living in overcrowded slums and tenement buildings.

Tenement Housing New York City Slum StudySmarter Fig. 1 - the slums of New York City

Tenement Housing in Chicago

The organization of tenement housing in Chicago was unlike than it was in New York Metropolis. In Chicago, tenement housing tended to surround centers of employment like slaughterhouses and stockyards. Information technology was rare for tenements to exist within the city center considering of a ban on wooden structures after the Peachy Chicago Fire of 1871.

Tenement Housing Conditions

As we know, workers were desperate and did not have an option when information technology came to tenement housing. Landlords were well aware of this and took advantage of the working poor.

Tenement Housing Apartment Interior StudySmarter Fig. 2 - weather inside a tenement house apartment in New York City

Tenement buildings were overcrowded, unsafe, and unsanitary. Typically, the apartment units were around 300 square feet and housed large families that could attain the teens in numbers. There was poor ventilation and lighting and no consideration for actual living conditions. Near apartment units did not even have a window or access to a burn down escape. Running water was not yet widespread, and so ofttimes residents would use outdoor bathrooms or throw their waste matter into the streets. And as we noted before, affliction and criminal offence were large issues.

A cholera epidemic that ravaged New York City in 1849 left approximately v,000 expressionless. Residents of tenement housing fabricated up the majority of deaths.

Tenement housing had existed since the early 19th century but proliferated during the Gilded Historic period. Atmospheric condition were notoriously bad in New York Metropolis where in that location were well over 50,000 tenement houses by 1900. In 1890, Jacob Riis, a muckraker , published How the Other Half Lives , which used photographs to expose conditions in New York Metropolis slums.

muckraker

investigative journalists that worked to betrayal abuse and scandal during the Progressive Era

Regulation of Tenement Housing in New York Urban center

The work of muckrakers like Jacob Riis led to calls for the regulation of tenement buildings as well as the comeback of conditions in existing slums. New York City passed a serial of Tenement House Acts throughout the belatedly-19th and early-20th centuries that attempted to regulate and better tenement housing (eastward.g., mandating fire escapes and indoor lighting).

By the plow of the century, conditions began to slowly improve only that is non to say these buildings were livable. A study from the Tenement Business firm Department in 1903 stated:

often at night, when the small rooms opening upon the air shaft are then close and ill-ventilated that sleep is impossible, mattresses are dragged upon the floor of the parlor and there the family sleeps birthday in i room. In summer the pocket-size bedrooms are so hot and stifling that a big function of the tenement business firm population slumber on the roofs, sidewalk and burn escapes."

Regime regulation also led to a new, unforeseen trouble. Landlords were unwilling to bear the cost of meeting the well-nigh basic edifice codes, so they raised the rent and transferred the added costs to the tenants, many of whom were already struggling to brand hire.

Tenement Housing Significance

Tenement housing is significant because, until the New Bargain in the 1930s, tenement housing was the housing bachelor to the working form. After the New Deal, public housing entered the equation and essentially ended the tenement era. However, the New Deal did not magically solve the problem of housing the urban poor. Going to any American city today, in that location volition exist pockets of poverty within the wealth of the city.

The New Bargain

a set up of policies, programs, and projects enacted under President Franklin D. Roosevelt that aimed to counteract the effects of the Slap-up Depression

Tenement Housing New Deal Public Housing Poster StudySmarter Fig. three - New Deal era poster promoting public housing

Tenement Housing - Key Takeaways

Tenement housing refers to a type of housing in which multiple apartment units are present in the same edifice. Tenement buildings first popped upwards in the early 18th century with the division of single-family residences.
Tenement housing proliferated during the Golden Age as urban populations grew. Landlords moved on from single-family unit residences to the construction of cheap tenement buildings in centers of poverty, chosen slums.
The working form did non take an option when it came to tenement housing and landlords took advantage of this. Conditions in tenement buildings were overcrowded, dangerous, unsanitary, and generally unlivable. Disease and crime ran rampant.
The piece of work of muckrakers like Jacob Riis led to increased regulation of tenement buildings. Unfortunately, this did not lead to vast improvements, and often, landlords raised the rent to cover the costs of meeting regulations.
Tenement housing was actually the merely housing available to the working class until the introduction of public housing under the New Deal.