19th century: over 80,000 tenements built.
About 2/3 of the city population lived in them. |
"...Thousands of people are living in the smallest space...for human beings to exist crowded together in dark, ill-ventilated rooms, in many of which the sunlight never enters and in most of which fresh air is unknown. They are centers of disease, poverty, vice, and crime...some children grow up to be thieves, drunkards, and prostitutes..." -The Tenement House Problem, (1901) |
The Gilded Age of America (1869-1899)
The period of the influx of immigrants and uneven wealth distribution - poverty gaps. |
In New York (Manhattan) especially, this large wave of new immigrants led to the overcrowding and disastrous conditions of tenements.
"The tenements were unheated except by coal stoves or braziers, which spewed noxious gases and frequently started fires. Apartments intended for a family of four might be inhabited by multiple families of six or eight--sometimes multiple families in a single room. Plumbing was frequently a matter of a communal pump and outhouse in the back court."
-Luc Sante, [Student Email Interview, November 18, 2014]
In addition to disease and extremely unnecessarily high mortality rates, there was terrible sanitation and little medical service for preventable diseases. Most tenements had at least one case of pulmonary tuberculosis every few years and in some, there have been as great a number as twenty-two different cases of this terrible disease.