“Living Together”

During the 1860 and 1870 hundreds of tenement multiple dwelling units were built primary on the lower side of the city for the poor immigrants that arrived.

The immigrants mostly German and Dutch who escaped from their home countries had to face with the new reality and the poor conditions of living in contrast to their hopes for new life.

The dwelling units were built on 25 foot wide lots that were part of the grids layout of the city. the lots that were supposed to be used for single family houses eventually were used for buildings housing around 20 families each.

Because at this time the architecture in the city just started its way in development there were very little lows for regulation and protection such as for fire safety and those few lows were mostly ignored by the owners because there wasn’t any one to regulate them.

It is hard to imagine but in addition to the economy and labor difficulties that the immigrants had to face their living conditions were even worst. they lived in very crowded conditions, each apartment had only one room with window, there was almost no light, no ventilation and no water in the buildings although it was exist in the city.

In addition, those buildings had toilets only in the backyards that were allowed to be flashed once a day with a permission from owner representatives.

The poor sanitation and living conditions that the immigrants had to live with brought sicknesses and early deaths for many of them.

The poor living conditions  of the  immigrants even brought reactions against it such as Ernest Flagg a well known architect who wrote that” the greatest evil which ever befell New York City was the division of the blocks into lots of 25×100 feet”.