A Day in the life 1902 I was fortunate enough to visit the Tenement museum in the Lower East Side. Our Guide David gave a recreated apartment tour at 27 orchard where 20 families lived inside. Tailors Harris and Jennie Levine and the Lustgarten’s who owned the local butcher shop. Tenements were described as 3 or more families living independently with a kitchen. Rents at the time were $13 per month on average where 30% income was allotted to rent and 30 % income to food. People migrated from the lower east side tenements to Williamsburg or Bensonhurst Brooklyn.

1. Rahsaan Browne
Rahsaan Browne
Fall 2022
Affordable And Sustainable Housing
Tenement Museum: Walking Exhibit: “Day in The Life:1902” & The History of Tenement Housing in NYC
Dr. Dicaprio-Real1-UC-1030
Tenement Museum: Walking Exhibit: “Day in The Life:1902” & The History of Tenement
Housing in NYC
Throughout the fall semester in Dr. DiCaprio’s Affordable housing class at NYU, we discussed
Tenement housing and its origins. I was fortunate enough to visit the Tenement Museum on 11/9/22 and
attend a walking tour by guide David: “Day in The Life:1902”. This story describes the life and
migration of two Russian-Jewish families the Levine’s and the Lustgarten's. They came to America to
escape anti-Semitism and racism in Europe. The Levine’s were tailors and the Lustgarten’s were
butchers very hard-working people. These were some of the local trades of the time. The Levine’s
worked at home producing clothing garments that they sold to factories while the Lustgarten’s sold
kosher meat to the local families in the neighborhood. These families resided in the tenements at 27
Orchard Street New York, NY in the late 1890’s sharing space with an additional twenty families. The
apartment make up was 3 or more independent rooms with a coal-fired kitchen. These were railroad-
style apartments with little ventilation and bathrooms located usually in the hallways. In this building,
only two families had bathrooms inside their apartments. Rents were $13 per month on average and 30%
of disposable income went to rent and 30% of disposable income went to food. Families stayed in the
tenements until they were able to save enough money and move to better accommodations usually
taking 10 or more years. What’s interesting is that you see the Jewish migration from the lower east side

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right over the bridge to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Jews after leaving the tenements mainly migrated to
places like Williamsburg, Brighton Beach, Coney Island, Bensonhurst, and parts of Queens. In search of
a better life and a further unencumbered pursuit of the American Dream. Below are some of the actual
pictures of the families living quarters and how they resided in the tenement and the museum's recreated
scenes of how they lived.
Photographs: Rahsaan Browne Tenement Museum: Hallway Bathroom

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Photographs: Rahsaan Browne Tenement Museum
The Levine’s Apartment: 3 rooms with a tailors’ workspace in the main room. All work was performed without electricity and
by a hand-powered sewing machine.
2 Adults and 4 Children shared the sleeping space in the rear of the apartment. The babies slept in the kitchen near the coal-
burning stove.

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Photographs: Tenement Museum
“Pictured here at the Lustgartens’ butcher shop it would normally be brimming over with customers waiting in line to
purchase meat for their families with market baskets and young children in tow. While they waited, shoppers would have
traded pleasantries and gossip, in Yiddish and English.”

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Tenement Housing Early History
Progressive housing policies in NYC began with housing reformers and philanthropists wanting to
improve the living circumstances of the working poor, not with affordability. If anyone knows the
terrain of Manhattan it’s built on Schist rock and landfilled marshland, both of which present unique
challenges when being developed.
Affordable housing is built by either non-profit or for-profit developers. The housing policies of New
York City have been created by a commitment to activist government and progressive social policies. In
the 1880s, photojournalist Jacob Riis took photos that alerted the public to the tenement's unsanitary
state. The public's response to his efforts prompted the first governmental housing intervention, but it
was housing reformers and philanthropists wanting to improve the living circumstances of the working
poor, not necessarily concerned with affordability.
Alfred Tredway White was one of these people; he built the Home Structures in Cobble Hill (1877), the
Warren Place working cottages (1878), and the Tower buildings in Brooklyn (1879). Open space,
sunlight, improved ventilation, fire safety precautions, and separate rooms were among the building's
characteristics, setting a new standard for tenement life. People would be surprised at what affordable
housing looked like at that period in time.
When the government’s commitment to public housing waned in the 1970s, everyday New Yorkers
became more involved and became creative with affordability. And it has been that way until now.
Much of what happens in New York City involves both the public and private sectors. It was recognized
that there were more creative ways to encourage developers to build affordable housing.
1. Nancy Steinke, “Cobble Hill Historic District Designation Report,” Cobble Hill Historic District Designation Report
(NYC.Gov, 1969)

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The History of NYC Tenement Homes
Many of the wealthier people of New York City began to migrate north in the first part of the nineteenth
century, before the creation of the street grid some transported their old homes or sometimes left their
low-rise brick row homes behind. Simultaneously thousands of newly arrived immigrants seeking a
better life in the “New World” began to swarm into America's cities. Groups of newcomers from every
ethnicity flocked to places like the Lower East Side, NYC. "Tenement" was a name for housing where
the city’s urban poor lived towards the end of the Civil War, usually implying a dangerous and
unsanitary living environment. There were more than 15,000 tenement buildings in New York City
alone, not including the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, or Staten Island, with the city's population
approaching one million inhabitants quickly.
The population quadrupled per decade from the 1800s to the 1880s. Buildings that had originally been
single-family houses were increasingly converted into various living quarters to serve the growing
population in New York City. According to existing city regulations at the time, a traditional tenement
building was built five to seven stories tall with no setback and was (usually 25 feet wide and 100 feet
long). Many tenements started as single-family homes, and many older properties were converted into
tenements by adding stories on top of or expanding the backyards. Little air and light would emit and
there was less than a foot of space between buildings leading to unsafe living conditions.
“While New York City underwent major developments in the 300 years between European settlement
and World War I, it wasn’t until the early 1900s that Manhattan saw a major surge in demand for
housing. In the 30 years prior, Upper Manhattan had transitioned amidst the farmland, marshland, and
schist rock hills into single-family houses, tenements, and apartment buildings. With the population

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peaking at around 2.3 million in 1910, the average price per square foot of a Manhattan apartment was a
mere $8 and rents at that time varied anywhere from $15-$40 a month.”
2. Medium.Com Nycrec, “A Brief History of New York City's Real Estate Market,” Medium (Medium, September 27, 2018
The evolution of tenement design, from Pre-Law to Old Law to New Law, is an illustration from the Tenement House
Commission Report of 1895. NYC Municipal Library. 3
With magnified inequalities growing between the upper and lower ends of the socioeconomic scale, the
relationship between housing and social class quickly became intertwined. Rapid expansion in New
York City, as well as the imposition of the New York City Street grid in 1811, had a significant impact
on the appearance, density, and availability of housing for all New Yorkers. The Manhattan Street grid
permitted lots that were 25 feet by 100 feet, and tenements frequently took up around 90% of these lots,
leaving little area for natural light or air shafts. Buildings that did not take up the full lot sometimes had
"back tenements" erected into the yards behind them, which were far worse than the apartments in the
buildings that fronted the streets. It was all exceedingly dense, congested, and unregulated conditions
that bred sickness and horrible living conditions, which drew social reformers to act. In 1849, a cholera

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pandemic claimed the lives of 5,000 individuals, many of whom were impoverished people living in
overcrowded tenements.
The Tenement Housing Acts of 1867 & 1901
Affordable housing has always been a prominent issue in New York City. New York State passed the
Tenement House Law on May 14th, 1867. This was the nation's first comprehensive housing reform
law. The tenement house act for the first time legally defined a tenement and set important construction
regulations. It established standards for minimum room size, ventilation, and sanitation. It required fire
escapes and at least one toilet or privy (usually outside) for every twenty inhabitants. The population
increased by approximately 600 percent between 1820 and 1860, from 123,706 to 813,699. Imagine the
difficulty of swiftly constructing that much housing with only rudimentary technology.
Immigrants in New York City had little options but to crowd into tenements. They established squatters'
shacks in underdeveloped places like Kips Bay and Murray Hill uptown. The shacks were not inspected
or legislated like the tenements since they were deemed unlawful and temporary, therefore, very little
official documentation exists. They did, however, emerge often in newspapers during this period,
primarily due to fires or murders.
The New York Tenement House Department was created in 1901 to enforce new building standards and
document safety and health violations in New York City's overcrowded multi-family dwellings. The old
one and two-story “Knickerbocker” style dwellings with a large backyard on a 90-foot lot were
transformed into cut-up tenements often housing a 10-member household in a single apartment.
Outdated building designs, shabby construction, and greed-fueled attempts to cram as many people as
possible into the tenements became the norm. What followed was known as the “packing box” tenement
with almost no ventilation and a tiny yard. Riis described this design as “a hopeless back-to-back type,

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which meant there was no ventilation and could be none.” He noted that allowed “stenches from
horribly foul cellars” to “poison” tenants living on the fifth floor. Next came the double-decker” with a
small air shaft. The state report called the double-decker “an evil which is peculiarly our own” and “the
one hopeless form of tenement construction.” Though a slight improvement on the packing box, “the
double-decker cannot be well-ventilated; it cannot be well-lit; it’s not safe in case of fire.”
3 Encylopedia.Com. “Tenement House Act.” Encyclopedia Britannica, May 23, 2018.
Conclusion
This report discussed the plight of two Jewish families living in the tenements. The tenement housing
Act and the history of tenement housing in NYC.
In New York City the primary cause of the affordable housing crisis is that low inventory outweighs the
exceedingly high demand, resulting in a continuous shortage.
Affordable housing or the lack thereof in NYC begins with housing policies spawned by housing
reformers and philanthropists wanting to improve the basic living circumstances of the working poor,
not solely or primarily concerned with the issues of affordability. The density of NYC and the materials,
that the land is made of make this an ongoing issue.
In general, affordable housing in New York City has been defined as housing that costs one-third or less
of a household's income and is regulated in such a way that the rent cannot rise dramatically over time.
In conclusion, the issues with affordable housing have always revolved around the primary issue of a
lack of new housing units coupled with changes in the city’s population density.

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Wages for the City's renters have also stagnated, especially in the last 20 years, increasing by less than
15 percent. During the same period, the average monthly rent for an apartment in New York City
increased by almost 40 percent. What it costs to make housing affordable depends on the cost of
construction, the tenant’s relationship to the AMI, and what the tenant will pay for rent. The 30% cap of
the renter’s total income for rent in public housing was augmented in 2016 by the Affordable NY
Housing Program, which offers three options for tax exemptions to restart the 421a tax break in New
York State to developers building new multifamily residential buildings in NYC. These are among a
series of tax reliefs that try to compensate for the moratorium on federal financing of affordable housing.
As you see in the 5 boroughs of New York City, vertical construction is occurring everywhere. While
again there is no definitive answer, proposed solutions must include the continued development of new
affordable housing units which could contribute to the city’s ongoing housing problem along with
adjustments to the size and type of buildings allowed in rezoning areas that will fuel the creation of new
residential units.

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Works Cited
Browne, Rahsaan. Valley Stream, NY, 2022, pp. 1–3,18 Case Study: The History of Affordable Housing
in New York City.
“Day in the Life: 1902.” Tenement Museum, The Tenement Museum.Org, 9 Nov. 2022,
www.tenement.org/tour/day-in-the-life-1902/.
Editors, History.Com. “Tenements.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, April 22, 2010.
https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/tenements.
Encylopedia.Com. “Tenement House Act.” Encyclopedia Britannica, May 23, 2018.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/art-and- architecture/architecture/tenements#:
~:text=New%20York%20State%20passed%20a, outside) %20for%20
every%20twenty%20inhabitants.
Nycrec, Medium.Com. “A Brief History of New York City's Real Estate Market.” Medium. Medium,
September 27, 2018. https://medium.com/@teamnycrec/a-brief-history-of-new-york-citys-real-
estate-market- 841a724439ca.
Steinke, Nancy. Cobble Hill Historic District Designation Report. NYC.Gov, 1969. http://s-
media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/0320.pdf.