Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1898 — Overcrowding in New York City. [ARTICLE]

Overcrowding in New York City.

In tenements the average family has one light room, the other either entirely dark or lighted by an air shaft. Some of the houses are In a moderately good sanitary condition, but many are extremely bad. I believe, upon the whole, that the old style of -tenement house Is better than tlie new. The rooms were larger, with more light and air; less of the ground was built over, uuless there was a rear tenement. Now we find three or four tiny rooms, dark, with “modern conveniences.” Part of the kitchen Is occupied by a eouple of stationary washtubs and a sink. When a stove, a table and a eouple of chairs are added the room Is almost completely filled. The front room is large enough to accommodate a table, a lounge, three or four chairs. Thus there Is no room for more than two people at one time. The bedroom will hold a three-quarters bed and occasionally a chair may be squeezed In. For such a place as this $lO to sl2 a month,will be charged. To-day I saw a family (an ordinary case) where the front room of such an apartment ns described was used for a shoe-mending shop. The man and two assistants mended old shoes “for the trade.” They, with their tools and a lounge, completely filled the room. There was a kitchen and two bedrooms, the latter so small that in order to exumine my patient I either had to sit on the bed or stand up. The family consists of three persons and three lodgers. The rent Is $10.50 per month. The apartment is what is called tlie basement of the new style of flat house, but is really a part of the cellar plastered off.

This week, in a similar apartment, where men. women and children weTe finishing trousers,, we found three families—one lived in the bedroom, one in the kitchen and the other in the front room. A fourth family came to join the family iu the front room on the last clay of my visit to the child sick with diphtheria.—Dr. Annie S. Daniel, in Muncipal Affairs.