USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -At the turn of the century more than half the population of New York City, and most immigrants, lived in tenement houses, narrow, low-rise apartment buildings that were usually grossly overcrowded by their landlords.

Detailed explanation-2: -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. Jews lived on Lower East Side from Rivington Street to Division Street and Bowery to Norfolk street. This was where they started lives in America.

Detailed explanation-3: -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.

Detailed explanation-4: -Tenement buildings were constructed with cheap materials, had little or no indoor plumbing and lacked proper ventilation. These cramped and often unsafe quarters left many vulnerable to rapidly spreading illnesses and disasters like fires.

Detailed explanation-5: -By 1900, more than 80, 000 tenements had been built in New York City. They housed a population of 2.3 million people, a full two-thirds of the city’s total population of around 3.4 million.