Known as tenements, these narrow, low-rise apartment buildings–many of them concentrated in the city’s Lower East Side neighborhood–were all too often cramped, poorly lit and lacked indoor plumbing and proper ventilation. By 1900, some 2.3 million people (a full two-thirds of New York City’s population) were living in tenement housing.
What is the difference between a tenement and an apartment?
The difference between Apartment building and Tenement
- Tenement as a noun: A building that is rented to multiple tenants, especially a low-rent, run-down one.
- Tenement as a noun (legal): Any form of property that is held by one person from another, rather than being owned. ...
- Tenement as a noun (figurative): Dwelling; abode; habitation.
What was one of the dangers living in a tenement?
What were the dangers of living in slums and tenements? Cramped, poorly lit, under ventilated, and usually without indoor plumbing, the tenements were hotbeds of vermin and disease, and were frequently swept by cholera, typhus, and tuberculosis.
What were some dangers of living in tenements?
unsanitary conditions were dangerous because people could be prone to sickness and diseases and few windows made the tenements too hot to live in. What was one result of landlords not taking care of tenements in the early 1900? What was one result of landlords not taking care of tenements in the early 1900s?
What is meant by tenements?
In the United States, the term tenement initially meant a large building with multiple small spaces to rent. As cities grew in the nineteenth century, there was increasing separation between rich and poor. With rapid urban growth and immigration, overcrowded houses with poor sanitation gave tenements a reputation as slums.
Why is it called a tenement?
Known as tenements, these narrow, low-rise apartment buildings–many of them concentrated in the city's Lower East Side neighborhood–were all too often cramped, poorly lit and lacked indoor plumbing and proper ventilation.
What does tenement mean in history?
1a : any of various forms of property (as land) that is held by one person from another. b : an estate in property. 2 : dwelling. History and Etymology for tenement. Anglo-French, from Old French, from Medieval Latin tenementum, from Latin tenēre to hold.
What does it mean to live in a tenement?
Tenements (also called tenement houses) are urban dwellings occupied by impoverished families. They are apartment houses that barely meet or fail to meet the minimum standards of safety, sanitation, and comfort.
What is the difference between a tenement and an apartment?
Legally, the term "tenement" refers to an apartment building with multiple dwellings, usually with a few apartments on each floor that all share an entry staircase. However, some people refer to tenements as a reference to low-income housing.
Where is the word tenement from?
1300, "holding of immovable property" (such as land or buildings,) from Anglo-French (late 13c.), Old French tenement "fief, land, possessions, property" (12c.), from Medieval Latin tenementum "a holding, fief" (11c.), from Latin tenere "to hold," from PIE root *ten- "to stretch." The meaning "dwelling place, residence ...
When was the word tenement first used?
13th centuryEtymology. First attested in the 13th century, From Old Occitan [Term?], from Medieval Latin tenimentum, from Latin teneō (“hold”).
What is considered a tenement?
The Oxford English Dictionary's primary definition of tenement is "a room or a set of rooms forming a separate residence within a house or block of apartments." It's a fairly all-inclusive definition that speaks to the historic definitions of tenement as well as its modern and colloquial connotations, which the ...
Do tenements still exist?
While it may be hard to believe, tenements in the Lower East Side – home to immigrants from a variety of nations for over 200 years – still exist today.
Which is the best definition for the term tenement?
1. The definition of a tenement is a run-down or dilapidated apartment building. An apartment building that has boarded up windows, leaky plumbing and barely-working heating is an example of a tenement. noun.
How many rooms did a tenement have?
Four to six stories in height, tenements contained four separate apartments on each floor, measuring 300 to 400 square feet. Apartments contained just three rooms; a windowless bedroom, a kitchen and a front room with windows.
When did tenements end?
In 1936, New York City introduced its first public housing project, and the era of the tenement building officially ended.
What is a synonym for tenement?
boarding house. digs. apartment complex. high-rise apartment building. living quarters.
Which is the best definition for the term tenement?
1. The definition of a tenement is a run-down or dilapidated apartment building. An apartment building that has boarded up windows, leaky plumbing and barely-working heating is an example of a tenement. noun.
What was tenement life like?
Cramped, poorly lit, under ventilated, and usually without indoor plumbing, the tenements were hotbeds of vermin and disease, and were frequently swept by cholera, typhus, and tuberculosis.
What is a synonym for tenement?
boarding house. digs. apartment complex. high-rise apartment building. living quarters.
Who mostly lived in tenement houses?
The Jewish immigrants that flocked to New York City's Lower East Side in the early twentieth century were greeted with appalling living conditions. The mass influx of primarily European immigrants spawned the construction of cheaply made, densely packed housing structures called tenements.
What is a tenement house?
In the United States, the term tenement initially meant a large building with multiple small spaces to rent. As cities grew in the nineteenth century, there was increasing separation between rich and poor. With rapid urban growth and immigration, overcrowded houses with poor sanitation gave tenements a reputation as slums. The expression "tenement house" was used to designate a building subdivided to provide cheap rental accommodation, which was initially a subdivision of a large house. Beginning in the 1850s, purpose-built tenements of up to six stories held several households on each floor. Various names were introduced for better dwellings, and eventually modern apartments predominated in American urban living.
What is a tenement in Scotland?
A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access, on the British and Irish Isles notably common in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, in Edinburgh, tenements were developed with each apartment treated as a separate house, ...
How many people live in tenement houses?
We have visited one house that we found to be occupied by 98 persons, another by 74 and a third by 73.
What was the first comprehensive legislation on housing conditions?
The Tenement House Act of 1866 , the state legislature's first comprehensive legislation on housing conditions, prohibited cellar apartments unless the ceiling was 1 foot above street level; required one water closet per 20 residents and the provision of fire escapes; and paid some attention to space between buildings.
Why are apartments in tenement buildings so popular?
Apartments in tenement buildings in both cities are now often highly sought after, due to their locations , often large rooms, high ceilings, ornamentation and period features.
What is the old law tenement?
As a compromise, the " Old Law tenement " became the standard: this had a "dumbbell" shape, with air and light shafts on either side in the center (usually fitted to the shafts in the adjacent buildings), and it typically covered 80 percent of the lot.
How many bedrooms are there in a tenement?
In more affluent areas, tenement flats form spacious privately owned houses, some with up to six bedrooms, which continue to be desirable properties. In the United States, the term tenement initially meant a large building with multiple small spaces to rent.
What is a tenement house?
They are apartment houses that barely meet or fail to meet the minimum standards of safety, sanitation, and comfort. Emerging in U.S. cities during the late 1800s, tenements took many shapes and forms: multistoried buildings, row houses, frame houses, and even converted slave quarters.
How many people are in a tenement?
Early tenements might occupy as much as 90 percent of their lots, leaving little room behind the building for privies and water pumps and little ventilation, light, or privacy inside the tenement. With a large extended family and regular boarders to help pay the rent, which could otherwise eat up over half of a family's income, a tenement apartment might house as many as from ten to twelve people at a time. These tenement residents often also worked in the building in such occupations as cigar rolling and garment making.
What is a tenement in New York?
TENEMENTS. The New York City Tenement House Act of 1867 defined a tenement as any rented or leased dwelling that housed more than three independent families. Tenements were first built to house the waves of immigrants that arrived in the United States during the 1840s and 1850s, and they represented the primary form of urban working-class housing until the New Deal.
What were the first attempts to reform tenement conditions?
From the beginning, reformers attacked tenement conditions. In New York City, early attempts at reform included fire-prevention measures, the creation of a Department of Survey and Inspection of Buildings in 1862, and the founding of the Metropolitan Board of Health in 1866. Meanwhile, city tenements were getting increasingly
What is a servient tenement?
In the law of easements, a dominant tenement or estate is that for which the advantage or benefit of an easement exists; a servient tenement or estate is a tenement that is subject to the burden of an easement.
How many people lived in tenement buildings in New York City in 1864?
crowded: by 1864, approximately 480,400 of New York City's more than 700,000 residents lived in some 15,300 tenement buildings.
What was the plight of tenement dwellers?
The plight of tenement-dwellers became the object of reformers who waged campaigns with government to pass laws requiring landlords to meet certain standards of safety and sanitation. Legislation was passed ( New York became the first state to adopt legislation in 1867, which was furthered in 1879 and 1901), but the laws did not require owners to retrofit existing buildings to comply with the new regulations.
Overview
Specific places
As the United States industrialized during the 19th century, immigrants and workers from the countryside were housed in former middle-class houses and other buildings, such as warehouses, which were bought up and divided into small dwellings. Beginning as early as the 1830s in New York City's Lower East Side or possibly the 1820s on Mott Street, three- and four-story buildings were …
History
The term tenement originally referred to tenancy and therefore to any rented accommodation. The New York State legislature defined it in the Tenement House Act of 1867 in terms of rental occupancy by multiple households, as
Any house, building, or portion thereof, which is rented, leased, let, or hired out to be occupied or is occupied, as the home or residence of more than three famili…
See also
• Cortiço, tenements in Portuguese-speaking countries
• NIMBY
• Urban decay
Further reading
• Huchzermeyer, Marie. Tenement cities: from 19th century Berlin to 21st century Nairobi, Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2011, ISBN 9781592218578.
• Kearns, Kevin C. Dublin Tenement Life: An Oral History of the Dublin Slums, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1994, repr. 2006, ISBN 9780717140749.
External links
• Media related to Tenement houses at Wikimedia Commons
• Kamienice category at Polish Wikipedia