New Law Tenement Floor Plan

Note that the new style tenement s footprint if you will was wider with 6 bays across instead of the formerly standard 4 bays.

New law tenement floor plan.

A model tenement house. Required under the new law to include a large courtyard which consumed more space than the 1879 old law s air shafts new law tenements tend to be built on multiple land lots or on corner lots to conserve space for dwelling units the renting of which is the money making purpose of the structure. A rare example of a tenement which could fulfill the requirements of the new law on a 25 foot wide lot. Plan of first floor.

At least one of the living rooms for each family must have one hundred and twenty square feet of floor space and seventy square feet is the minimum allowance for any room. In the early 21st century a typical lower east side or east village street will still be. 208 thompson street built 1903. Every room in the new law tenements is light and well ventilated.

Irma and paul milstein division of united states history local history and genealogy the new york public library. Despite the new law the tenement department in its first heavily documented and illustrated report for 1902 and 1903 noted that some of the conditions found in these buildings surpasses the imagination. The 1879 law required that every habitable room have a window opening to plain air a requirement that was met by including air shafts between adjacent buildings. The typical floor plan shown for this particular building featured two apartments instead of four in this upscale building built more for the middle to upper class renters.

The tenements built according to this law followed that rule but they did so by creating extremely narrow air shafts. If you looked at the building from above it would be shaped like a series of dumbbells pushed together with the air shafts being the small space between them you can see a sample floor plan here. Despite its shortcomings the dumbbell was the most accepted plan for tenements for over twenty years until the new tenement law was passed in 1901. Plan of upper floors new york public library digital collections.