Tenement living conditions and sanitation

Conditions of urban New York were barely livable.  There were very little laws regulating how tenements were designed.  With two-thirds of New York City's population living in urban areas, builders and landlords saw an opportunity for a huge profit.  So they just renovated old houses and made them the worst conditions possible.  Tenements were described as, "narrow, ill lighted, badly ventilated and overcrowded[.]" Living conditions at the time were certainly not competent for the population.

Men outside tenement

In 1881 the New York City Department of Street Cleaning was made to clean the streets of garbage.  Four years later there was an incinerator built on Governor's Island.  This incinerator only burnt 25% of New York City's trash, the rest was dumped in the Atlantic.  Then in 1895 George Waring became the Commissioner of the Department of Street Cleaning.  He initiated a waste plan that made ocean dumping illegal and started a recycling effort.  His plan divided trash into 3 categories.  Food waste was steamed and compressed to make grease and fertilizer.  Rubbish was paper and other materials, and ash was landfilled with other non-marketable rubbish.  Later in 1905, New York City used an incinerator to make electricity.

Despite the efforts of the Sanitation Department living conditions remained the same.  It was not until 1901 that the New York State legislature passed regulations on living conditions of tenement houses.  The Tenement House Act of 1901 put heavy regulations on tenement buildings.  For example, each bedroom required a window and had to have cleaning access.  All public spaces had to be lit naturally or artificially.  Landlords had to install metal fire escapes with ladders.  Fire escapes even had to be in the hallways and on the first floor.  The law now required at least one indoor toilet for every two families.  With these new laws came enforcement.  The organization that enforced the laws was the Tenement House Department.  They sent inspectors to investigate tenement complaints, and there were a lot of them.  If the property did not comply with the law, landlords faced fines and potential condemnation of their property.  

Bandit's Roost

Landlords were not very happy about these new regulations.  So, builders and landlords found ways to bend the law even though it would cost them less to build a new building that complied with the law.  One example is how landlords would sometimes install windows that opened up into the interior airshafts.  There was even a group of landlords and builders that acted politically to delay the full effect of the law by 10 years.  This group was the United Real Estate Owners' Association.  

Man sleeping in cellar

Since landlords had an extra 10 years to not worry about regulations the conditions stayed the same.  An article in the New-York Tribune (31 May 1903 p.7) shares some of the complaint letters that were written.  These letters reveal the truly inhumane conditions that the landlords provided for their tenants.  One letter reads, "Why has the inspector not come? Four weeks has a dead cat been under the staircase, and the odor is awful."  The next letter tells about the extremely dangerous conditions that tenants had to endure.  "Please come and look after the house of No. - Suffolk-st., because the gas didn't burn[.]"  My breath was taken away when I read this letter.  Not only could everybody in the tenement died of gas poisoning, the whole building could have caught on fire if somebody decided they were going to smoke indoors.  

Cigar makers

So, what caused New York's issue with disease, living conditions, and waste management?  The clear cause were the masses of immigrants that came and stayed in New York.  Ellis Island best exemplifies New York's trash problem throughout its history.  When New York needed to expand, the government built Ellis Island with landfill material.  Ellis Island originally had about 3 acres of land, the other acres were built with landfill.  This is not a very practical use of a landfill but it shows how much trash New York had.  With time living conditions got better.  The Tenement House Act is still the standard for apartment regulations today. But New York still struggles finding new ways to rid the city of garbage.

Ragpickers Row

Sources:
Jstor: book with photos of Jacob Riis.
I used this source to look at some of Jacob Riis' photography

cuny.edu: Timeline of New York waste management
I used this source to get certain dates of the Sanitation Department's History

Library of Congress, Chronicling America: article describing tenement conditions
I used this to get a description of what tenements were like

Library of Congress, Chronicling America: article with tenant complaints
I used this to read some of the complaints

PovertyHistory.org: Tenement House Act
I used this to research what the tenement house act required

Gizmodo: Ellis Island built on trash
I used this to see what parts of New York were built on trash