Moniruz Zaman

Arch 3522

As New York City was becoming a center piece for the world during the 1800’s, there were many innovations and changes that caused positive and negative effects within the city itself. When the Erie Canal was built, major advancements in trading and business took place. Exporting and importing of goods became much easier and more efficient. Transportation was also positively affected through the newly built canal. The building of the canal created more jobs for people, which caused more immigrants to arrive to New York City. As population of immigrants increased in New York City, there were things taking place that would bring much sorrow to many people. During the 19^th century, more than 35 million people migrated from Europe to the US and many of them stayed in New York City. This was the greatest transfer of population in history. The high density of the immigrant population made a lot of jobs scarce. Immigrants and natives of New York City began competing for the same jobs. Immigrants were hated by many people for this reason and eventually a class system in New York City formed. High volume of the continuation of immigrants called out for a need, which was housing. Tenements were then introduced to accommodate large amounts of people in compact apartment. Tenement buildings were usually 4-5 stories high and the allies were dark and dirty. Each floor had about 3 apartments and each apartment had 3 rooms. Two of those rooms served as bedrooms for 15-20 people and the other served as a kitchen, dining room, and living room all in one. Water for cleaning things and bathing were taken from the street pump to the apartments.

Living conditions in the tenements were very harsh and many people died because of the diseases and bacteria that would spread among the poor immigrants.  Yellow fever came into the city 5 times between 1795 and 1822 and these types of epidemics were mainly affecting the places where the Irish lived. Immigrants were more likely to die from diseases and infections because the officials of the city did not really bother with it. Many patients of hospitals were immigrants and in one hospital, more than 83% of all the patients were immigrants. During the year of 1857, more than 65% of deaths were of children, immigrant children. This was the real slum life, which was barely a lengthy life. There were many difficulties at that time for immigrants and they could not properly take it to the officials for many reasons. One main reason was their lack of speaking proper English.