New York’s Improved Tenements 
are represented; in others on First Avenue, containing 
789 tenants, there are representatives of twenty na¬ 
tionalities. In tenements on the lower east side the 
mingling of foreigners is even more marked. The 
friction that would wear terribly upon the health and 
convenience even of a homogeneous mass of occu¬ 
pants is heightened in these cases by diversities in 
speech, modes of thought, ideas of family life and 
social obligation that seem almost disintegrating 
in their natural results. If domestic privacy is the 
birthright of every decent American family it is much 
more necessary that the mixed aggregations of people 
housed in tenements should be taught to respect the 
obligation of conforming to the American standard in 
this respect. 
The year 1901 is the most noticeable point of 
departure in the history of tenement house improve¬ 
ment in New York. In that year a law was passed 
remedying, so far as legislative intervention could, 
evils which had become intoler- 
able under the old system 
These were, according 
to the report of the 
Tenement House 
Commission of 
1900, insuffi¬ 
ciency of light 
and air due to 
narrow courts or 
shafts, undue height of 
buildings and the occupation by the 
building or by the adjacent buildings of too 
great proportion of the lot area; danger from hre; 
lack of separate toilet and washing facilities; over¬ 
crowding; foul cellars and courts and other like evils. 
The law also directed that certain defects of insuffi¬ 
cient light and sanitation in improperly constructed 
tenements already existing should be done away with, 
and a city tenement house department was created for 
the enforcement of the act. These notable results 
were due chiefly to the zeal and expert knowledge of 
members of the Tenement House Committee of the 
Charity Organization Society of New York City, 
among whom are such men as Robert W. DeForest, 
Dr. E. R. L. Gould, Henry Phipps, Jacob A. Riis, 
I. N. Phelps Stokes, Lawrence Veiller and Alfred 
T. White, the last named being the pioneer in model 
tenement construction in the United States. The 
committee has been engaged since 1898 in active 
effort for the betterment of living conditions among 
the working population, and, not content with the 
appointment of the Tenement House Commission 
of 1900 and the passage of the Tenement House Act 
of 1901, maintains its vigilant oversight of existing 
conditions. It aims not only to secure a strict 
enforcement of the law in New York as provided by 
the Tenement House Department of the city govern¬ 
ment, but to advocate such changes as its trained 
observation of the working of the law deems advisa¬ 
ble. Still more important is its work as the watch¬ 
dog of tenement house reform in the interest of the 
tenants and public and as against interested cliques 
whose friends at Albany would pass deteriorating 
amendments of the act. 
As illustrations of conditions before and after 1901, 
representations are given from models exhibited by 
the Tenement House Committee, of a block on the 
east side, as it stood on January i, 1900; of a block 
of typical “dumb-bell” tenement buildings, as such 
a block would be if built up entirely of houses erected 
in accordance with the laws in force prior to 1901; 
and of a block of new-law tenement houses. 
In the first case (Fig. i) the block included thirty- 
nine tenement houses, was bounded by Chrystie, 
Forsyth, Canal and Bayard Streets, and contained 
605 different apartments, occupied by 2,781 persons, 
of whom 2,315 were over five years of age and 466 
under five years. It has 1,588 rooms, but only 264 
water-closets and not one bath. Hot 
water is supplied to only 
forty apartments. 
There are 441 dark 
rooms, with no 
ventilation by 
the outer air 
and no light or 
air except that 
derived from other 
rooms; and 635 
rooms obtaining 
their sole light and air 
from dark and narrow 
air shafts. The conse¬ 
quences of lack of light 
and of bad sanitation 
were as follows; in five 
years thirty-two cases 
of tuberculosis were recorded from this block, and 
in one year thirteen cases of diphtheria. In five 
years there were 665 applications for charitable 
relief. The gross rentals amounted to $113,964 a 
year. This block is by no means one of the worst 
of its kind, but under the new law the erection of 
another like it would be impossible. 
The “dumb-bell” block (Fig. 2), so-called because 
the buildings roughly resemble the form of a dumb¬ 
bell, is perhaps the worst type of tenement ever 
allowed in a modern enlightened community, and was 
actually adopted, though under strong protest from 
some quarters, after several competitive designs had 
been submitted. The halls and ten out of the 
fourteen rooms on each floor are dark and ill-venti¬ 
lated, dependent for light and air solely upon narrow 
air shafts, which give little or no light below the top 
floors. Each tenement house in the block accom¬ 
modates four families on each floor in fourteen rooms, 
Fig. 2 
A block of typ 
i c a I “ dumb -bell 
tenement houses as it could be 
if built according to tbe laws in 
force in igoo 
27 
