Year: 1878

$4,000 of tho Inhabitants In Tenement


Houses.


There are, says a New York paper,
according to the records of the depart
ment of buildings, 2I,000 tenement
houses in the city of New York in a to-
tai of $4,000 buildings of all kinds.
Taken all through the city, the new and
the old, the first and the second classes,
they average four stories in height, and
are constructed to hold two families and
half to each floor, or ten families to
house. Accordingly, if all these build
ings are full, the.tenement house popu-
lation of New York is 210, 900 families,
which, at Ave persons to a family, would
make 1850, 900 men, women and chill
dren. This is evidently an overestimate.
but certain experienced agents of tene-
ment houses on the east side say that
twenty per cent. is all that need be de-
Quoted for houses or parts of houses not
occupied. That deduction leaves net
tenement house population of 840,00
souls.


1t has been said that the tenements
averaged two and half families to
floor, or ten families to house, but the
population is not at all equally distrib-
uted; in some buildings there are as
many as five families on floor, and in
others one or two. Most of the build
ings are so built as to effect the greatest
possible economy in space, in ventila-
tion and in safety. High and narrow,
with contracted Railways and walls of
the minimum thickness allowed by
the department of buildings, with little
or no open space in the rear, and fre-
quently rear tenement building instead
of court, they are hardly bearable as
places of habitation in the winter, aad
still less SO in the summer. Indeed, it
has become common sight to see their
inmates sleeping on summer nights on
the roofs of their dwellings or in carts in
front of them rather than suffocate
within doors. 1t is their cheapness and
their cheapness only that gives them
any attraction to the poor, and their
cheapness is due to the possibility of
packing them with tenants and to the
practice of building them on the most
economical plan.


The tenement houses are not, as many
suppose, confined exclusively to the
lower districts; they are found all over
the city, and fringe the island on the
extreme east and the extreme west sides
all the way up Town. The most fashion,
able part of New York is fanked by
them on either side, and straight line
down from Murray Hill to first avenue
on the one side, and from Murray Hill
| to Tenth avenue on the other, would
discover some of the very worst of these
dwellings. They are constantly increas-
ing, too; within the past eighteen months
800 new ones have been put up, some
down town below Houston street, and
others up town as far as Harlem. The
| distress of the time has not relieved
them of their usual class of tenants 80
much as it has filled them with a new
class, which formerly inhabited private
houses. The cheaper tenements are
better patronized than ever, and land
owners who would not venture to build
ordinary dwelling houses to stand
vacant, are willing to take advantage OF
the present low price of labor by erect
ing tenements, which insure q safe and
steady, though slow, return for the
investment.


In most of these houses there are from
fifteen to twenty families, and in some
there are more huddled together, and
making life bearable as best they can.
The crowding would be less tolerable
but for the fact that, by their male
tenants at least, the tenements are used
almost exclusively as sleeping places.
In the spring and summer months the
women, too, forsake the close buildings
for the not much fresher air of the
curbstone and the pavements outside. A
walk along First avenue, in the locality
indicated, after dusk, at this time of the
year, will discover the doorsteps alive
with women nursing their infants, and
with young girls gossiping among them
selves Or flirting with the young men;
the sidewalk and roadway literally
swarming with children screaming and
shouting at play, while the scene is lit
up by the brilliant lights of the myriad
liquor saloons.


Perhaps the most noticeable feature
of this tenement house district is the
extraordinary number of liquor saloons
it contains. At casual glance one
would say that there was grog shop to
every five houses; on one block there
are no less than seven. These are diff
ferent in appearance from the German
larger-beer saloons of the lower districts
as the people who patronize them are
from the German beer drinkers. Instead
of the low-roofed, dark basement, with
its modest little counter and it's sombre
proprietor dispensing beer from behind,
one sees large, snowy stores, brilliantly
lighted without and gorgeous within,
with long mirrors rejecting the array of
shining and vari-colored glasses ranged
along the counter.


Times are very hard among the tene-
ment house people. Hardly house but
has one poor family in distress because