The 1811 Grid.
“The greatest evil which ever befell New York City was the division of the blocks into 25 feet by 100 feet. So true is this that no other disaster can for a moment be compared to it. Fires, pestilence and financial troubles are nothing in comparison, for from this division has arisen the New York system of tenement houses, the worst curse which ever afflicted any great community.”
—Architect and reformer Ernest Flagg, 1894.
By the time Mr. Flagg wrote these alarming messages about tenement housing conditions, there were already 35,000 tenement buildings in Manhattan, and by 1890, there were 43,000, and another 34,000 of them in Brooklyn. In a city where 97% were renters, two-thirds of all residents lived in tenements.
As early as 1833, small building lots, meant for single-family homes and small shops, were seeing the development of taller, 4- to 6-story buildings to meet the needs of the growing city. At a time when only the lower-income classes dwelt in multi-family buildings, these new, taller buildings were cheap to build, cheap to maintain, and utilized space very efficiently. Lacking any zoning laws or uniform building codes, builders were able to fill the site from side to side, leaving only a small backyard for privies.
Tenements were defined as multi-family buildings rented to three or more families, each having independent cooking facilities and sleeping quarters. To maximize space, the typical tenement was laid out with four apartments of three rooms each. These buildings were truly cookie-cutter structures, perhaps patterned after similar buildings in London, but probably built from stock building plans.
Builders of even limited means took great pride in their accomplishments, and would not think of constructing even a utilitarian building without ornamentation. According to a study by the Tenement Museum, by the time Lucas Glockner built his first tenement at 97 Orchard St. in 1863-64, standardized windows, doors, lumber and trims of sheet metal or cast clay were readily available.
Mr. Glockner was one of the many Germans to arrive in the first wave of immigration and, led by his desire to be a landowner in the new country, built this building for his family with rooms for other renters. He applied the prevailing style of architecture, the late Victorian or Italianate style, and went on to build other tenements. This style was so prevalent that we can find nearly identical examples throughout NYC.
The Immigration Flood
What started out as a response to a growing demand for starter housing had, by 1870, become a social, political, economic, health and safety dilemma.
Many histories and exposés have been written about the slum conditions within tenement neighborhoods, and the historic Lower East Side of Manhattan is the most well-known and well-deserved focus. In the 1890s, the Lower East side was the most densely populated neighborhood anywhere in the world, with a density of about 1,089 persons per acre.
The first big wave of immigration consisted mainly of German and Irish from 1840 on. Between 1855 and 1890, Castle Garden (New York State’s official Immigration Center, now called Castle Clinton) registered 8 million immigrants. From 1892 to 1954, the federal immigration center at Ellis Island processed 12 million people. In addition, immigrants from the north and south traveled overland to New York City, drawn by jobs and commercial opportunities.
The city was compact, with residences and factories in close quarters. Most immigrants came with very little, and would take whatever jobs were offered, in close proximity to where they landed. The tenements in the city were a vast improvement over the ramshackle wooden houses scattered around the city. For many immigrants, the tenements may have been better than the homes they left in the “old country,” even though most tenements had no running water (until the 1880s), indoor toilets (until the 1890s), nor electricity (until the 1910s).
As George Capsis recalls, “Half a century ago, I visited Jonas and Adolphus Mekas at 95 Orchard Street and witnessed them pull out an ice pick wedged into a cold water pipe in the ceiling to shower standing in a chipped porcelain pan.” This was the primitive bathing arrangement for this “cold-water flat” even in the 1950’s.
Look for Part Two—discussing the Fight to Reform and Tenements Today—in the next issue.
The Tenement Museum is at 97 Orchard Street, and their visitors’ center and offices are nearby. Call (212) 431-0233, or visit http://www.tenement.org for more information.
