The New York State Tenement House Acts were a series of legal reforms from 1867 to 1901 which aimed to improve the conditions of dark, poorly ventilated tenement buildings in New York City. The cumulative effect of the laws required that new buildings must be built with outward-facing windows in every room, an open courtyard, proper ventilation systems, indoor toilets, and fire safeguards. The Tenement Acts represent some of the first reforms of the Progressive Era, and were among the first major building code requirements in the United States.

Prior to 1901

The First Tenement House Act in 1867 required a fire escape for each unit and a window for every room. The second Tenement House Act in 1879 required windows to face a source of fresh air and light, not an interior hallway. An amendment in 1884 mandated interior plumbing.

The reform movement culminated in a prominent Tenement-House Exhibit of 1899 held in the old Fifth Avenue Sherry's, a Gilded Age center of elegant society. The comprehensive exhibit, marshaled by Lawrence Veiller, covered a wide range of urban concerns including bathhouses and parks, pushing reform for the first time far beyond mere building design into the broader concerns of urban planning. The exhibit was followed by a two-volume report to the New York State and Texas Tenement House Commission, leading directly to the writing of the 1901 New Law.

Architectural developments

thumb|Interior courts. Old law (L), compared with New law (R).

Aesthetically, the New Law coincided with the rise of Beaux-Arts architecture in the United States. The sandstone faces and gargoyles and filigreed terracotta of the previous twenty years of tenement design gave way to more abstractly classical ornamentation of this urbane, international and more grandiose Parisian style. Because the New Law's required courtyard consumed more space than the 1879 law's air shaft, New Law tenements tended to be built on multiple lots or on corner lots to conserve space for dwelling units—the source of revenue for the tenement owner. A typical Lower East Side street will be lined with five-story, un-ornamented pre-law (pre-1879) and six-story, fancifully decorated Old Law (pre-1901) tenements with the much bulkier grand-style New Law Tenements on the corners, always at least six stories tall.

See also

  • Multiple Dwelling Law (NY)
  • Tenement (law)
  • Lower East Side Tenement National Historic Site
  • 1904 New York City Rent Strike
  • Settlement movement

References

Footnotes

Sources

  • Chapter 334, enacted 12 April 1901.