Lights and Shadows of New York Life

J >> James D. McCabe >> Lights and Shadows of New York Life

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The reader will no doubt suppose that the inmates of these houses are
compelled to remain in them because of extreme poverty. This is not the
case. The tenement houses are occupied mainly by the honest laboring
population of New York, who receive fair wages for their work. They herd
here because the rents of single houses are either out of proportion to,
or beyond their means, and because they are convenient to their work.
They are not paupers, but they cannot afford the fearful cost of a
separate home, and they are forced to resort to this mode of life in
order to live with any degree of comfort. Many of the most skilled
mechanics, many of the best paid operatives of both sexes, who are
earning comfortable wages, are forced to live in these vast barracks,
simply because the bare rent of an empty house in a moderately decent
neighborhood, is from $1000 upward. Did the city possess some means of
rapid transit between its upper and lower extremities, which would
prevent the loss of the time now wasted in traversing the length of the
island, there can be no doubt that the tenement sections would soon be
thinned out.

There are two classes of tenement houses in the city. Those occupied by
the well-to-do working people, and those which are simply the homes of
the poor. The first are immense, but spruce looking structures, and are
kept cleaner than the latter, but all suffer from the evils incident to
and inseparable from such close packing. Those of the second class are
simply dens of vice and misery. In the older quarters of the city, many
of the old time residences are now occupied as tenement houses. The old
Walton mansion in Pearl street, opposite the vast establishment of Harper
& Brothers, was once the most elegant and hospitable mansion in New York.
It is now one of the most wretched tenement houses in the city. The
tenement houses of the upper wards, however, were constructed for the
uses to which they are put. As pecuniary investments they pay well, the
rents sometimes yielding as much as thirty per cent. on the investment.
One of them shall serve as a description of the average tenement house.
The building stands on a lot with a front of 50 feet, and a depth of 250
feet. It has an alley running the whole depth on each side of it. These
alley-ways are excavated to the depth of the cellars, arched over, and
covered with flag stones, in which, at intervals, are open gratings to
give light below; the whole length of which space is occupied by water
closets, without doors, and under which are open drains communicating
with the street sewers. The building is five stories high, and has a
flat roof. The only ventilation is by a window, which opens against a
dead wall eight feet distant, and to which rises the vapor from the vault
below. There is water on each floor, and gas pipes are laid through the
building, so that those who desire it can use gas. The building contains
126 families, or about 700 inhabitants. Each family has a narrow
sitting-room, which is used also for working and eating, and a closet
called a bed room. But few of the rooms are properly ventilated. The
sun never shines in at the windows, and if the sky is overcast the rooms
are so dark as to need artificial light. The whole house is dirty, and
is filled with the mingled odors from the cooking-stoves and the sinks.
In the winter the rooms are kept too close by the stoves, and in the
summer the natural heat is made tenfold greater by the fires for cooking
and washing. Pass these houses on a hot night, and you will see the
streets in front of them filled with the occupants, and every window
choked up with human heads, all panting and praying for relief and fresh
air. Sometimes the families living in the close rooms we have described,
take "boarders," who pay a part of the expenses of the "establishment."
Formerly the occupants of these buildings emptied their filth and refuse
matter into the public streets, which in these quarters were simply
horrible to behold; but of late years, the police, by compelling a rigid
observance of the sanitary laws, have greatly improved the condition of
the houses and streets, and consequently the health of the people.
During the past winter, however, many of the East side streets have
become horribly filthy.

[Picture: THE INSIDE VIEW OF A TENEMENT HOUSE.]

The reader must not suppose that the house just described is an
exceptional establishment. In the Eleventh and Seventeenth wards whole
streets, for many blocks, are lined with similar houses. There are many
single blocks of dwellings containing twice the number of families
residing on Fifth avenue, on both sides of that street, from Washington
Square to the Park, or than a continuous row of dwellings similar to
those on Fifth avenue, three or four miles in length. The Fourth ward,
covering an area of 83 acres, contains 23,748 inhabitants. The city of
Springfield (Massachusetts), contains 26,703 inhabitants. The Eleventh
ward, comprising 196 acres, contains more people than the cities of
Mobile (Alabama), and Salem (Massachusetts), combined. The Seventh ward,
covering 110 acres, contains more inhabitants than the city of Syracuse
(New York). The Seventeenth ward, covering 331 acres, contains more
inhabitants than the city of Cleveland (Ohio), which is the fifteenth
city in the Union in respect of population.

The best of the tenement houses are uncomfortable. Where so large a
number of people are gathered under the same roof to live as they please,
it is impossible to keep the premises clean. A very large portion of
them are in bad repair and in equally bad sanitary condition. In 1867
these houses made up fifty-two per cent. of the whole number, and there
is no reason to believe that there has been any improvement since then.
Many of them are simply appalling. They become more wretched and squalid
as the East River and Five Points sections are reached. Cherry, Water,
and the neighboring streets, are little better than charnel houses.

About three months ago one of the most wretched rookeries in the city was
cleared out and cleansed by order of the Board of Health. This was known
as "Sweeney's," and stood in Gotham Court. The immediate cause of its
overhauling was the discovery of its actual condition made by Detective
Finn and Mr. Edward Crapsey of the New York _Times_, during a visit to
it. Mr. Crapsey gives the following interesting account of his visit:

"As we stopped in Cherry street at the entrance to Gotham Court, and
Detective Finn dug a tunnel of light with his bullseye lantern into the
foulness and blackness of that smirch on civilization, a score or more of
boys who had been congregated at the edge of the court suddenly plunged
back into the obscurity, and we heard the splash of their feet in the
foul collections of the pavements.

"'This bullseye is an old acquaintance here,' said the detective, 'and as
its coming most always means "somebody wanted," you see how they hide.
Though why they should object to go to jail is more than I know; I'd
rather stay in the worst dungeon in town than here. Come this way and
I'll show you why.'

"Carefully keeping in the little track of light cut into the darkness by
the lantern, I followed the speaker, who turned into the first door on
the right, and I found myself in an entry about four feet by six, with
steep, rough, rickety stairs leading upward in the foreground, and their
counterparts at the rear giving access to as successful a manufactory of
disease and death as any city on earth can show. Coming to the first of
these stairs, I was peremptorily halted by the foul stenches rising from
below; but Finn, who had reached the bottom, threw back the relentless
light upon the descending way and urged me on. Every step oozed with
moisture and was covered sole deep with unmentionable filth; but I
ventured on, and reaching my conductor, stood in a vault some twelve feet
wide and two hundred long, which extended under the whole of West Gotham
Court. The walls of rough stone dripped with slimy exudations, while the
pavements yielded to the slightest pressure of the feet a suffocating
odor compounded of bilge-water and sulphuretted hydrogen. Upon one side
of this elongated cave of horrors were ranged a hundred closets, every
one of which reeked with this filth, mixed with that slimy moisture which
was everywhere as a proof that the waters of the neighboring East River
penetrated, and lingered here to foul instead of purify.

"'What do you think of this?' said Finn, throwing the light of his
lantern hither and thither so that every horror might be dragged from the
darkness that all seemed to covet. 'All the thousands living in the
barracks must come here, and just think of all the young ones above that
never did any harm having to take in this stuff;' and the detective
struck out spitefully at the noxious air. As he did so, the gurgling of
water at the Cherry street end of the vault caught his ear, and
penetrating thither, he peered curiously about.

"'I say, Tom,' he called back to his companion, who had remained with me
in the darkness, 'here's a big break in the Croton main.' But a moment
later, in an affrighted voice: 'No, it ain't. Its the sewer! I never
knew of this opening into it before. Paugh! how it smells. That's
nothing up where you are. I'll bet on the undertaker having more jobs in
the house than ever.'

"By this time I began to feel sick and faint in that tainted air, and
would have rushed up the stairs if I could have seen them. But Finn was
exploring that sewer horror with his lantern. As I came down I had seen
a pool of stagnant, green-coated water somewhere near the foot of the
stairs, and, being afraid to stir in the thick darkness, was forced to
call my guide, and, frankly state the urgent necessity for an immediate
return above. The matter-of-fact policeman came up, and cast the
liberating light upon the stairs, but rebuked me as I eagerly took in the
comparatively purer atmosphere from above. 'You can't stand it five
minutes; how do you suppose they do, year in and year out?' 'Even they
don't stand it many years, I should think,' was my involuntary reply.

"As we stepped out into the court again, the glare of the bullseye
dragged a strange face out of the darkness. It was that of a youth of
eighteen or twenty years, ruddy, puffed, with the corners of the mouth
grotesquely twisted. The detective greeted the person owning this face
with the fervor of old acquaintanceship: 'Eh, Buster! What's up?'
'Hello, Jimmy Finn! What yez doin' here?' 'Never mind, Buster. What's
up?' 'Why, Jimmy, didn't yez know I lodges here now?' 'No, I didn't.
Where? Who with?' 'Beyant, wid the Pensioner.' 'Go on. Show me where
you lodge.' 'Sure, Jimmy, it isn't me as would lie to yez.'

"But I had expressed a desire to penetrate into some of these kennels for
crushed humanity; and Finn, with the happy acumen of his tribe, seizing
the first plausible pretext, was relentless, and insisted on doubting the
word of the Buster. That unfortunate with the puffy face, who seemed to
know his man too well to protract resistance, puffed ahead of us up the
black, oozy court, with myriads of windows made ghastly by the pale
flicker of kerosene lamps in tiers above us, until he came to the last
door but one upon the left side of the court, over which the letter S was
sprawled upon the coping stone. The bullseye had been darkened, and when
the Buster plunged through the doorway he was lost to sight in the
impenetrable darkness beyond. We heard him though, stumbling against
stairs that creaked dismally, and the slide being drawn back, the
friendly light made clear the way for him and us. There was an entry
precisely like the one we had entered before, with a flight of narrow,
almost perpendicular stairs, with so sharp a twist in them that we could
see only half up. The banisters in sight had precisely three uprights,
and looked as if the whole thing would crumble at a touch; while the
stairs were so smooth and thin with the treading of innumerable feet that
they almost refused a foothold. Following the Buster, who grappled with
the steep and dangerous ascent with the daring born of habit, I somehow
got up stairs, wondering how any one ever got down in the dark without
breaking his neck. Thinking it possible there might be a light sometimes
to guide the pauper hosts from their hazardous heights to the stability
of the street, I inquired as to the fact, only to meet the contempt of
the Buster for the gross ignorance that could dictate such a question.
'A light for the stairs! Who'd give it? Sweeney? Not much! Or the
tenants? Skasely! Them's too poor!' While he muttered, the Buster had
pawed his way up stairs with surprising agility, until he reached a door
on the third landing. Turning triumphantly to the detective, he
announced: 'Here's where I lodges, Jimmy! You knows I wouldn't lie to
yez.'

"'We'll see whether you would or no,' said Finn, tapping on the door.
Being told to come in, he opened it; and on this trivial but dexterous
pretext we invaded the sanctity of a home.

"No tale is so good as one plainly told, and I tell precisely what I saw.
This home was composed, in the parlance of the place, of a 'room and
bedroom.' The room was about twelve feet square, and eight feet from
floor to ceiling. It had two windows opening upon the court, and a large
fireplace filled with a cooking stove. In the way of additional
furniture, it had a common deal table, three broken wooden chairs, a few
dishes and cooking utensils, and two 'shakedowns,' as the piles of straw
stuffed into bed-ticks are called; but it had nothing whatever beyond
these articles. There was not even the remnant of a bedstead; not a
cheap print, so common in the hovels of the poor, to relieve the
blankness of the rough, whitewashed walls. The bedroom, which was little
more than half the size of the other, was that outrage of capital upon
poverty known as a 'dark room,' by which is meant that it had no window
opening to the outer air; and this closet had no furniture whatever
except two 'shakedowns.'

"In the contracted space of these two rooms, and supplied with these
scanty appliances for comfort, nine human beings were stowed. First
there was the 'Pensioner,' a man of about thirty-five years, next his
wife, then their three children, a woman lodger with two children, and
the 'Buster,' the latter paying fifteen cents per night for his shelter;
but I did not learn the amount paid by the woman for the accommodation of
herself and children. The Buster, having been indignant at my inquiry as
to the light upon the stairs, was now made merry by Finn supposing he had
a regular bed and bedstead for the money. 'Indade, he has not, but a
"shakedown" like the rest of us,' said the woman; but the Buster rebuked
this assumption of an impossible prosperity by promptly exclaiming,
'Whist! ye knows I stretch on the boords without any shakedown
whatsumdever.'

"Finn was of opinion the bed was hard but healthy, and fixing his eyes on
the Buster's flabby face thought it possible he had any desirable number
of 'square meals' per day; but that individual limited his acquirements
in that way for the day then closed to four. Finn then touching on the
number of drinks, the Buster, being driven into conjecture and a corner
by the problem, was thrust out of the foreground of our investigations.

"By various wily tricks of his trade, Detective Finn managed to get a
deal of information out of the Pensioner without seeming to be either
inquisitive or intrusive, or even without rubbing the coat of his poverty
the wrong way. From this source I learned that five dollars per month
was paid as rent for these two third-floor rooms, and that everybody
concerned deemed them dirt cheap at the price. Light was obtained from
kerosene lamps at the expense of the tenant, and water had to be carried
from the court below, while all refuse matter not emptied into the court
itself, had to be taken to the foul vaults beneath it. The rooms, having
all these drawbacks, and being destitute of the commonest appliances for
comfort or decency, did not appear to be in the highest degree eligible;
yet the Pensioner considered himself fortunate in having secured them.
His experience in living must have been very doleful, for he declared
that he had seen worse places. In itself, and so far as the landlord was
concerned, I doubted him; but I had myself seen fouler places than these
two rooms, which had been made so by the tenants. All that cleanliness
could do to make the kennel of the Pensioner habitable had been done, and
I looked with more respect upon the uncouth woman who had scoured the
rough floor white, than I ever had upon a gaudily attired dame sweeping
Broadway with her silken trail. The thrift that had so little for its
nourishment had not been expended wholly upon the floor, for I noticed
that the two children asleep on the shakedown were clean, while the
little fellow four years of age, who was apparently prepared for bed as
he was entirely naked, but sat as yet upon one of the three chairs, had
no speck of dirt upon his fair white skin. A painter should have seen
him as he gazed wonderingly upon us, and my respect deepened for the
woman who could, spite the hard lines of her rugged life, bring forth and
preserve so much of childish symmetry and beauty.

"Having absorbed these general facts, I turned to the master of this
household. He was a man of small stature but rugged frame, and his left
shirt sleeve dangled empty at his side. That adroit Finn, noticing my
inquiring look, blurted out: 'That arm went in a street accident, I
suppose?'

"'No, sir; it wint at the battle of Spottsylvania.'

"Here was a hero! The narrow limits of his humble home expanded to
embrace the brown and kneaded Virginian glades as I saw them just seven
years ago, pictured with the lurid pageantry of that stubborn fight when
Sedgwick fell. This man, crammed with his family into twelve feet square
at the top of Sweeney's Shambles, was once part of that glorious scene.
In answer to my test questions he said he belonged to the Thirty-ninth
New York, which was attached to the Second Corps, and that he received a
pension of $15 per month from the grateful country he had served as
payment in full for an arm. It was enough to keep body and soul
together, and he could not complain. Nor could I; but I could and did
signify to my guide by a nod that I had seen and heard enough, and we
went down again into the slimy, reeking court."

There is a square on the East side bounded by Houston, Stanton, Pitt, and
Willett streets. It contains a group of three front and seven rear
houses, and is known as "Rag-pickers' Row." These ten houses contain a
total of 106 families, or 452 persons. All these persons are
rag-pickers, or more properly chiffonniers, for their business is to pick
up every thing saleable they can find in the streets. Formerly they
brought their gatherings to this place and assorted them here before
taking them to the junk stores to sell them. Now, however, they assort
them elsewhere, and their wretched dwellings are as clean as it is
possible to keep them. They are generally peaceable and quiet, and their
quarrels are commonly referred to the agent in charge of the row, who
decides them to their satisfaction. They are very industrious in their
callings, and some of them have money in the Savings banks. Nearly all
who have children send them to the Mission Schools.

The Board of Health, in one of their recent publications, express
themselves as follows:

"The worst class of tenement houses was those where a landlord had
accommodations for ten families, and these buildings comprise more than
half of the tenement houses of the city, and accommodate fully two-thirds
of the entire tenement-house population. When the number of families
living under one owner exceeded ten, it was found that such owner was
engaged in the keeping of a tenement-house as a business, and generally
as a speculator. It is among this class of owners that nearly all the
evils of the tenement-house system are found. The little colony exhibit
in their rooms, and in the little areas around their dwellings, extreme
want of care. The street in front of the place was reeking with slops
and garbage; the alleys and passage ways were foul with excrements; the
court was imperfectly paved, wet, and covered with domestic refuse; the
privies, located in a close court between the rear and front houses, were
dilapidated, and gave out volumes of noisome odors, which filled the
whole area, and were diffused through all the rooms opening upon it; and
the halls and apartments of the wretched occupants were close,
unventilated, and unclean. The complaint was universal among the tenants
that they are entirely uncared for, and that the only answer to their
request to have the place put in order, by repairs and necessary
improvements, was, that they must pay their rent or leave. Inquiry often
disclosed the fact that the owner of the property was a wealthy gentleman
or lady, either living in an aristocratic part of the city or in a
neighboring city, or, as was occasionally found to be the case, in
Europe. The property is usually managed entirely by an agent, whose
instructions are simple, but emphatic, viz., 'collect the rent in
advance, or, failing, eject the occupants.' The profits on this sort of
property, so administered, are rarely less than fifteen per cent., and
more generally thirty per cent. upon the investment."

The evils of the tenement house system are almost incalculable. It is
the experience of all nations that barrack life is demoralizing, and the
tenement house is but a barrack without the rigid discipline of a
military establishment. Its inmates know no such thing as privacy. Home
is but a word with them. They have habitations, but not homes. Within
the same walls are gathered the virtuous and the depraved, the honest
laborer and the thief. There can be no such thing as shielding the young
from improper outside influences. They have every opportunity to become
thoroughly corrupted without leaving the house. Decency is impossible.
Families exist in the greatest amount of personal discomfort, and the
children take every opportunity to escape from the house into the
streets. The tenement houses every year send many girls into the ranks
of the street walkers, and a greater number of young men into the ranks
of the roughs and thieves.

Drunkenness is very common among the inhabitants of these houses. Men
and women are literally driven into intemperance by the discomfort in
which they live. Nearly all the domestic murders occurring in the city
are perpetrated in the tenement houses. Immorality is very common.
Indeed, the latter crime is the logical result of such dense packing of
the sexes. It is a terrible thing to contemplate, but it is a fact that
one half of the population of this great city is subjected to the
demoralizing influences of these vast barracks. The laboring class, who
should constitute the backbone and sinew of the community, are thus
degraded to a level with paupers, forced to herd among them, and to adopt
a mode of life which is utterly destructive of the characteristics which
should distinguish them. It is no wonder that crime is so common in the
Metropolis. The real wonder is that it does not defy all restraint.

The tenement houses are afflicted with a terrible mortality. Says Dr.
Harris, "Consumption and all the inflammatory diseases of the lungs vie
with the infectious and other zymotic disorders, in wasting the health
and destroying the life of the tenement population." Of late years a new
disease, the relapsing fever, which, though rarely fatal, destroys the
health and vigor of its victims, has made havoc among the tenement
population. The mortality among children is very great, and perhaps this
is fortunate for them, for it would seem that death in their first flush
of innocence is far better than a life of wretchedness and perhaps of
infamy. Small pox and all the contagious and infectious diseases would
make short work with the tenement-house population, were any of them to
become epidemic in the city. There would be nothing to check them, and
the unfortunate people living in these sections would find no means of
escaping from them.

LXI. CHATHAM STREET.

The oldest inhabitant cannot remember when Chatham street did not exist.
It still contains many half decayed houses which bear witness to its
antiquity. It begins at City Hall Place, and ends at Chatham Square. It
is not over a quarter of a mile in length, and is narrow and dirty. The
inhabitants are principally Jews and low class foreigners. Near the
lower end are one or two good restaurants, and several cheap hotels, but
the remainder of the street is taken up with establishments into which
respectable buyers do not care to venture. Cheap lodging houses abound,
pawnbrokers are numerous, several fence stores are to be found here, and
some twenty or twenty-five cellars are occupied as dance houses and
concert saloons. These are among the lowest and vilest of their kind in
New York.