Living Conditions

Upon arrival, the best housing most immigrants could find, unless they had relatives or friends, already in America, was the tenement. Many tenements were known as dumbbells, large on the top and bottom, and small in the middle. In reality, tenements were just cheaply made apartments divided into rooms.

In most rooms, there were no windows. The floors were weak and unstable. Also, the tenements were fire hazards with no fire escapes. Large families crowded into tiny rooms, often having no place to sleep. There were no bathtubs or running water/lighting for many of the immigrants.

Bathrooms came in the form of outhouses, where everyone in an apartment, usually around 20 families, shared five toilets, with no toilet paper or running water.

Disease was very common, despite attempts to keep the apartments clean. Until the government stepped in to inspect and improve conditions, immigrants suffered.