Now Maria and her three roommates enjoy TV show marathons on the couch with a delicious glass of wine.ĭespite this issue Maria continued to succeed in Gainesville working for several local businesses that allowed her the opportunity to get to know both the student side of town and the outer skirts filled with families. However, it was the right apartment but wrong roommates, until she found her current roommates. But in a short time she was able to find the apartment community with amenities that fit her personality just right. However, she was nervous about where to live as she lived in the same house her entire life. But as she moved to Gainesville in fall 2010 she was ready to embrace the college town life. Maria, having been a busy city girl her entire life, enjoyed the luxury of always having good restaurants open at all hours to support her nocturnal lifestyle habits. Whether, she is strolling the mall or surfing the web being up to date on the latest fashion trends is a must for her. Then, read up on the Bloody Angle, the spot right in the heart of New York's tenement zone that also became the deadliest street in the history of the United States.When she's not at the beach soaking up the sun this Miami girl loves shopping. But the squalor that immigrants endured in an attempt to build new lives is immortalized in the haunting photographs that remain to this day.Īfter looking at the tenements of the early 1900s, take a look at some striking Ellis Island immigration photos that reveal exactly the kinds of people who would soon occupy New York's tenements. In 1936, New York City introduced its first public housing project, and the era of the tenement building officially ended. But until 1918, there were no laws requiring that even electricity be installed in the apartments.

For instance, landlords resisted one expensive provision which required that interior rooms have an airshaft, eventually compromising by installing one window in the interior rooms.īy 1904, landlords were required to install toilets in the tenements. Now, landlords were required to install at least one window per bedroom and private bathroom per apartment.īut the notoriously stingy tenement building landlords still fought hard against these reforms. The Tenement House Act of 1901 cracked down on lax regulations and set up the Tenement House Department to inspect and enforce new building standards. Pair that with the fact that most apartments had coal-burning stoves - which choked residents with smoke and blackened the walls - and the people living there were condemned to life inside of what were virtually caves. Often, rather than walking all the way downstairs to the backyard, residents dumped chamber pot waste out of their windows.īedrooms were often cut off from fresh air, ventilation, and light. New York State's Tenement House Act of 1867, the first attempt to reform tenement building conditions, required that tenement buildings have one outhouse for every 20 residents. A single spigot in the backyard provided all the water for the building's tenants to cook, do laundry, and clean. Original tenements lacked toilets, showers, baths, and even flowing water. While the average tenement building's exterior specs could easily make you feel claustrophobic (most were just 25 feet wide and 100 feet long) their interiors were just as jarring. The conditions in these buildings were bad to say the least: For ten dollars per month, up to seven people could live within a space of about 325 square feet - the size of half a subway car.īy 1900, some 2.3 million people - two-thirds of New York City’s population at the time - were living in tenement housing, mainly converging in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. As European immigrants poured into the city seeking better lives, landlords converted single-family units into multi-room apartments. These multiple-occupancy buildings were born out of necessity.

These tenements, as defined by the New York State Legislature in 1867, constituted “any building…which is rented…out as the home of more than three families living independently of one another and doing their own cooking upon the premises.” In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, New York City swelled with wave after wave of European immigrants - and many lived in tenement buildings. These stunning photos reveal just how hard life was for the immigrant occupants of New York's tenement buildings a century ago.

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