The Hatching Cat of Gotham

A tenement house in New York is any building or part thereof which is occupied as the residence of three families or more living independently of each other and doing their own cooking in the premises. It includes apartment houses, flat houses and all other houses of similar character.”

–John J. Murphy, Commissioner of the Tenement House Department, Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York, April 1915

The Grid and the Tenement House

Manhattan’s rectangular grid plan of streets, established by the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, allowed for standard building lots measuring 25 feet by 100 feet. These long and narrow lots were OK for the old frame houses and smaller row houses that had been constructed in the 1700s or early 1800s. But the “old-law” tenements constructed in the mid-1800s tended to occupy about 90 percent of the lots, which did allow much room for natural light or air shafts.

Those buildings that did not occupy the entire lot often featured “rear tenements” in the back yards, which provided even fewer windows and worse conditions for the residents than did the buildings facing the streets. The dense, crowded, and unregulated conditions created a perfect breeding ground for disease and disaster.