Tenement
A crowded, low-cost multifamily rental building of the kind that housed millions of immigrant and working-class families in American cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the target of some of the nation's first housing laws.
What Is a Tenement?
A tenement is a multifamily rental building divided into small apartments for low-income households. In American history the word refers to the walk-up buildings that housed immigrants and working-class families in cities such as New York from the mid-1800s into the 1900s. Private landlords built and operated them for profit. There was no public subsidy.
New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission notes that by the mid-1860s, more than half of New York City’s population lived in tenements.
How Tenements Worked
A typical early New York tenement was 25 feet wide, the width of a standard 25-by-100-foot city lot. It rose about five stories, with four apartments on each upper floor, and housed 10 to 20 families. Apartments had two or three rooms, and only one of them got natural light. The rest had no direct light or air.
Reformers pushed New York State to regulate these buildings through a series of laws:
| Law | Key requirements | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Tenement House Act of 1867 | Fire escapes on non-fireproof buildings; at least one toilet per 20 tenants | Did not regulate building layout |
| Tenement House Act of 1879 (‘old law’) | A window in every room, facing the street, yard, or an air shaft | The narrow-waisted ‘dumbbell’ tenement |
| Tenement House Act of 1901 (‘new law’) | Much larger light and air requirements; a toilet in every apartment; stricter lot coverage | Effectively ended the dumbbell design |
The dumbbell’s air shafts were often too narrow to light the lower floors. They collected garbage and helped fires spread. After 1901, building on a single 25-foot lot became uneconomical, so new-law tenements were wider, typically six stories, and arranged around interior light courts.
Example
The tenement at 97 Orchard Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side is now a National Historic Site. The National Park Service estimates that about 7,000 people from more than 20 nations lived there between 1863 and 1935. Many immigrants in the neighborhood turned to home-based work such as dressmaking, and at one time more than 100 apartments along one block of Orchard Street held clothing workshops.
Why It Still Matters
Tenement reform helped establish the principle that government may set minimum standards for privately owned housing, the idea behind modern building and housing codes. It also exposed a lasting trade-off. Rules that make homes safer and healthier can raise the cost of building them, and that shapes who can afford the result. Later, government went beyond regulating private housing and began paying for housing directly. The Housing Act of 1937 set out to address the shortage of decent low-cost homes through public housing. For the full arc, see the history of affordable housing in America.
Sources
- NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission — Greenwich Village Historic District Extension II Designation Report (2010) (opens in a new tab)
- National Park Service — Lower East Side Tenement Museum National Historic Site, Frequently Asked Questions (opens in a new tab)
- NLIHC Advocates' Guide 2026 — A Brief Historical Overview of Affordable Rental Housing (opens in a new tab)
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