USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -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-2: -What Is Tenement Housing? In the 19th century, tenement housing was single-family buildings divided into multiple living spaces. Often narrow, low-rise apartments, the rooms were built “railroad style” which meant rooms without windows and poor ventilation.

Detailed explanation-3: -Tenements (also called tenement houses) are urban dwellings occupied by impoverished families. They are apartment houses that barely meet or fail to meet the minimum standards of safety, sanitation, and comfort.

Detailed explanation-4: -Therefore, tenements were the only places new immigrants could afford. Tenements were small three room apartments with many people living in it. About 2, 905, 125 Jewish and Italian immigrants lived in the tenements on the Lower East Side.

Detailed explanation-5: -The people inhabiting these buildings were certainly not the rich and the powerful; rather, the families who were crammed into the tenement houses and apartments were mostly European immigrants and poor laborers who could not afford to move to a better area of the city in which they were living.