As immigrants flooded into the New York in the mid 1800’s, their primary concern was to find a job that would earn them enough money to live comfortably, or possibly pay for family members to join them in the states. However, many of these immigrants arrived with little money, and a result they had to search for affordable housing to compliment their low level, menial jobs. In the 1830’s, immigrants generally did not face too much trouble finding cheap accommodations. However, according to Anbinder, as time passed, the inferior housing began to deteriorate due to overcrowding and lack of maintenance. By the 1850’s, the horrific tenement had become the central symbol of immigrant life in the United States, and especially in New York City.
The conditions in these tenements were absolutely pitiful. Whether made of brick or wood, these buildings were dark, filthy, and uninhabitable by modern standards to say the least. Many were poorly constructed with rickety wooden staircases and flimsy walls unable to protect its inhabitants from the elements outside and from the noises within. Due to the lack of indoor plumbing in almost all the tenements, many of them were plagued by pungent smells from the appalling outhouses that were virtually never properly drained. Worst of all was the shocking levels of overcrowding in the individual apartments. Anbinder notes that a typical one-room apartment housed five people, and that 46% of these apartments housed six or more individuals People sometimes slept five in a tiny bedroom with beds made out sacks placed on the dirt filled floor. These ghastly conditions were a fertile ground for disease and deaths, which were quite common in the worst of these buildings.
As I read about these unfathomable living conditions, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between some of these tenements and the European ghettos built for Jews at the outset of the Holocaust. Jews were forcefully ushered into these camps, which were characterized by overcrowding, filth, and disease. In no way am I saying that the conditions faced by 1850’s immigrants in the New York were anywhere near the level of hardship faced by European Jews. But my simple question is why would so many poor immigrants decide to come on their own volition to New York City to live in spaces that were nearly as bad ghettos used to imprison people? Granted, I know about the wide variety of push factors that included religious persecution and starvation. But for the immigrants that didn’t necessarily have to come, it’s mind boggling to me that families came all the way to New York to live in the depths of society in some of the world’s most awful living conditions. At the very least, someone in these countries of origin should have sent some of the plethora of immigrants to somewhere other than New York. Rather than wait for extreme levels of overcrowding to drive immigrants out of the city, people should have been proactive and funneled immigrants to other cities to prevent the overcrowding that hindered New York City for years.
