Old Law Tenement
Encyclopedia
Old Law Tenements are tenement
s built in New York City
after the Tenement House Act of 1879 and before the New York State Tenement House Act
of 1901.
The 1879 law required that every inhabitable room have a window opening to plain air, a requirement that was met by including air shafts between adjacent buildings. Old Law Tenements are commonly called "dumbbell tenements" after the shape of the building footprint: the air shaft gives each tenement the narrow-waisted shape of a dumbbell
, wide facing the street and backyard, narrowed in between to create the air corridor. They were built in great numbers to accommodate waves of immigrating Europeans from troubled nations. The side streets of Manhattan's
Lower East Side
are lined with dumbbell structures.
in the crowded tenement "dark bedroom."
Responding to the new requirements, a magazine, Plumbing and Sanitation Engineer, held a tenement design contest in 1879. James Ware's winning design represented a compromise between legal health standards and commercial viability. By indenting the sides of the structure three feet, he opened a slender airshaft between abutting buildings. The three-foot indentation required only a minimal sacrifice of rent-revenue space, placating the landlords, and provided just enough aperture for ventilation, if not direct light.
The 1879 Act, though well-intentioned, failed even worse than the 1867 Act. Tenement dwellers tossed garbage, bilge water and waste into these air shafts which were not designed for garbage removal. The attempt to improve sanitation only created a new sanitation problem. Worse, the air shaft acted as a flue spreading fire from apartment to apartment. The 1901 law did away with the air shaft, replacing it with the large courtyard for garbage storage and removal. In later structures, the introduction of elevators reduced garbage defenestration
by upper-story tenants.
of no apparent historical precedent, occasional design aberrations (e.g., dwarf columns) and its often varicolored brick, departs radically from the plain, dignified simplicity of the unassuming and largely unornamented older structures. Later in the Old Law period, the ornaments settle into a Queen Anne style, as the human representational forms gradually disappear into the more abstract extravagance of the following Beaux Arts style.
The symmetrical floor plan of the typical Old Law Tenement included four virtually identical apartments per floor, three rooms each, with the entry opening to the kitchen containing a wash tub alongside a sink opposite a wood-burning stove feeding into a flue. Two bathrooms were located on the landing in the hallway for common use.
Tenement
A tenement is, in most English-speaking areas, a substandard multi-family dwelling, usually old, occupied by the poor.-History:Originally the term tenement referred to tenancy and therefore to any rented accommodation...
s built in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
after the Tenement House Act of 1879 and before the New York State Tenement House Act
New York State Tenement House Act
One of the reforms of the Progressive Era, the New York State Tenement House Act of 1901 was one of the first such laws to ban the construction of dark, poorly ventilated tenement buildings in the state of New York...
of 1901.
The 1879 law required that every inhabitable room have a window opening to plain air, a requirement that was met by including air shafts between adjacent buildings. Old Law Tenements are commonly called "dumbbell tenements" after the shape of the building footprint: the air shaft gives each tenement the narrow-waisted shape of a dumbbell
Dumbbell
The dumbbell, a type of free weight, is a piece of equipment used in weight training. It can be used individually or in pairs .-History:...
, wide facing the street and backyard, narrowed in between to create the air corridor. They were built in great numbers to accommodate waves of immigrating Europeans from troubled nations. The side streets of Manhattan's
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
Lower East Side
Lower East Side, Manhattan
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....
are lined with dumbbell structures.
History
The 1879 Act was a response to the failure of the 1867 Tenement House Act which merely required a window in each room. Without air shafts, the 1867 requirement failed to increase natural light or fresh air ventilationVentilation (architecture)
Ventilating is the process of "changing" or replacing air in any space to provide high indoor air quality...
in the crowded tenement "dark bedroom."
Responding to the new requirements, a magazine, Plumbing and Sanitation Engineer, held a tenement design contest in 1879. James Ware's winning design represented a compromise between legal health standards and commercial viability. By indenting the sides of the structure three feet, he opened a slender airshaft between abutting buildings. The three-foot indentation required only a minimal sacrifice of rent-revenue space, placating the landlords, and provided just enough aperture for ventilation, if not direct light.
The 1879 Act, though well-intentioned, failed even worse than the 1867 Act. Tenement dwellers tossed garbage, bilge water and waste into these air shafts which were not designed for garbage removal. The attempt to improve sanitation only created a new sanitation problem. Worse, the air shaft acted as a flue spreading fire from apartment to apartment. The 1901 law did away with the air shaft, replacing it with the large courtyard for garbage storage and removal. In later structures, the introduction of elevators reduced garbage defenestration
Defenestration
Defenestration is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.The term "defenestration" was coined around the time of an incident in Prague Castle in the year 1618. The word comes from the Latin de- and fenestra...
by upper-story tenants.
Design
Stylistically, Old Law Tenements are unique and conspicuous. Though each uniformly occupies a twenty-five-foot lot just like the pre-Old Law tenement, the Old Law facade, with its fanciful sandstone human and animal gargoyles—sometimes in full figure—its terracotta filigreeFiligree
Filigree is a delicate kind of jewellery metalwork made with twisted threads usually of gold and silver or stitching of the same curving motifs. It often suggests lace, and in recent centuries remains popular in Indian and other Asian metalwork, and French from 1660 to the late 19th century...
of no apparent historical precedent, occasional design aberrations (e.g., dwarf columns) and its often varicolored brick, departs radically from the plain, dignified simplicity of the unassuming and largely unornamented older structures. Later in the Old Law period, the ornaments settle into a Queen Anne style, as the human representational forms gradually disappear into the more abstract extravagance of the following Beaux Arts style.
The symmetrical floor plan of the typical Old Law Tenement included four virtually identical apartments per floor, three rooms each, with the entry opening to the kitchen containing a wash tub alongside a sink opposite a wood-burning stove feeding into a flue. Two bathrooms were located on the landing in the hallway for common use.
Additional reading
- Lawrence Veiller, "New York's New Building Code" Charities Review 9 (1899-1900), 388-391. http://tenant.net/Community/LES/veiller2.html
- Lawrence Veiller, "The Tenement-House Exhibition of 1899" Charities Review 10 (1900-1901): 19-25. http://server1.fandm.edu/departments/AmericanStudies/faculty/schuyler/schuyler_urban/tenementhouse.html
- Robert DeForest and Lawrence Veiller, eds. The Tenement House Problem: Including the Report of the New York State Tenement House Commission, in two volumes (New York:MacMillan 1903) Volume I http://books.google.com/books?id=yM0JAAAAIAAJ&pg=PR7&lpg=PR7&dq=the+tenement+house+problem+robert+deforest+and+lawrence+veiller&source=web&ots=3aDDvzgGLn&sig=dV9pwzbS7UXQIMRrcdv_Q1wOG7E#PPR27,M1 Volume II http://books.google.com/books?id=3Wgtl1RHu7gC&pg=PP15&lpg=PP15&dq=the+tenement+house+problem+robert+deforest+and+lawrence+veiller+vol+ii&source=web&ots=Oh6pmaAUFX&sig=rcohw6PBj3tBgu8jpYTAmkiIFdA#PPP10,M1