I visited the New York Tenements last week and I was astonished at what I had seen. IT has been at least 115 years since Jacob Riis photographed these pictures above and I was seening the same conditions that he mentioned. I went to Hell's Kitchen which is photographed here:
The residents were complaining of poor sewage systems. The ones that I visited were so horribly runt that I left immediately. My friend even mentioned that the electricity SOMETIMES didn't run. She said that on Mondays the electricity flickered for several hours and she couldn't stand it. The problem that tenents face now-of-days is high rent and poor sewage systems.
That picture was taken in Elizabeth, New Jersey on April 10, 1956. The apartment was once home to a young Irish washer-woman that had died in her room one night. Investigators have stated that the woman was probably raped and murdered at the same time. When a person came to collect her rent several days later her body was already a corpse. This is the crime scene picture of her home.
I have several more pictures of crappy tenements with hardly any means to support human life in the Southern Bronx, The Queens, and even in some parts of Chinatown and Spanish Harlem. Yes, the federal law states that tenements must have electricity and clean running water but even that happens to slip through. When I talked to several tenement dwellers last year, 2004, they happened to dislike their dwellings stating that the rent was way too high. I remember this one Hispanic woman that lived in Spanish Harlem was sitting outside the steps watching her child play in the streets while I came by. I started to talk to her and she told me a sad, depressing story of tenement life. She protested against the high rents that were occurring. She told me that the landlord threatened to throw her out into the streets if she didn't pay the rent. She had just moved here from Venezuela couldn't speak very good English. The rents were not the only problem that she encountered. The sewage and the smell from a recent pipe breaking always smelt in her room. She did have electricity but it wasn't enough to fan out the awful smell.
02-26-2005 05:27 PM
