Example of an interior facing window
"Landlords figured it was cheaper to install an interior window rather than design an apartment building with real windows in every room that actually allowed for decent air flow."
-Ephemeral New York Blog
Fire escapes were filled with trash that people were throwing there because they weren't provided with proper disposal areas. There were also no safety evacuation measurements for people to follow in case of a fire. Those were the main reasons many people died in fires.
This is a chart of some of the Tenement house fires that happened during the years 1800 - 1900.
"During the past twelve months 41 persons have been burned to death in tenement houses in this city, and 34 persons have been more or seriously injured." - Tenement House Fires in New York
The Tenement House Commission of 1900.
The Tenement House Commission of 1900.
Cholera, tuberculosis, and other diseases were particularly common in the tenements because of the unhealthy overcrowded conditions and the unsafe water. Tuberculosis is an airborne disease and because there was no fresh air, it is very easy to contract. For example, 8,000 to 9,000 people died of tuberculosis per year in the early 1900's and in 1849 over 5,000 people died from cholera alone.
Another reason so many people died was because of the heat and no outside facing windows. They were called infant slaughterhouses because of the numbers of babies killed from heatstroke as well as cholera.
Another reason so many people died was because of the heat and no outside facing windows. They were called infant slaughterhouses because of the numbers of babies killed from heatstroke as well as cholera.
"The dread of advancing cholera, with the guilty knowledge of the harvest field that awaited the plague in the New York slums, pricked the conscience of the community into action soon after the close of the war." - Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives
"When it first opened, 97 Orchard had an iron fire ladder. Required by an 1862 housing law, it used a vertical ladder instead of stairs. Reformers decried this design and fire ladders were eventually banned. However, existing ladders were allowed to stay."
-Tenement Museum
"When it first opened, 97 Orchard had an iron fire ladder. Required by an 1862 housing law, it used a vertical ladder instead of stairs. Reformers decried this design and fire ladders were eventually banned. However, existing ladders were allowed to stay."
-Tenement Museum
"Composed of potato-peelings, oyster-shells, night-soil, rancid butter, dead dogs and cats, and ordinary black street mud, (the garbage boxes formed) one festering, rotting, loathsome, hellish mass of air poisoning, death- breeding filth, reeking in the fierce sunshine, which gloats yellowy over it like the glare of a devil whom Satan has kicked from his councils in virtuous disgust." -New York Tribune in 1863
