USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Cramped, poorly lit, under ventilated, and usually without indoor plumbing, the tenements were hotbeds of vermin and disease, and were frequently swept by cholera, typhus, and tuberculosis.

Detailed explanation-2: -One city inspector described the smell as “effluvia of vermin, dead and alive.” Foner writes about the “urine drenched passageways.” Usually smell is used to describe locations in a cursory way, but in the tenements the smells were overwhelming and a major part of the immigrant experience.

Detailed explanation-3: -Known as tenements, these narrow, low-rise apartment buildings–many of them concentrated in the city’s Lower East Side neighborhood–were all too often cramped, poorly lit and lacked indoor plumbing and proper ventilation.

Detailed explanation-4: -Many were poor and needed jobs. The jobs people found paid low wages so many people had to live together. Therefore, tenements were the only places new immigrants could afford. Tenements were small three room apartments with many people living in it.