New York City poverty 1890-1935

Tenement buildings that still line many of the streets of New York are now trendy apartments, or shops and have a romantic air about them, of times gone by, but in the early 1900's they were incredibly poor slum dwellings. The tenements were populated by newly arrived european immigrants as well as alcoholics, prostitutes and many excluded from society. Men, women and children would have often lived and worked in the same small ill ventilated rooms where crime and disease was prevalent. TB and pneumonia killed many, but violent crime killed many more with people living in such close and desperate conditions.

Created by freddie.norton