Wooster Street Houses, 1884

Wooster Street Houses, 1884

working-class dwellings, men, women, children, buildings

This illustration from the Community Service Society's Annual Report for 1884 suggests the primitive facilities for water supply available at that time to tenement house dwellers. It was reproduced in Riis' "The Battle With the Slums" under the title "An Old Wooster Street Court" (p.17). The following is from page 39 the "Forty-First Annual Report of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, for the year 1884": A narrow, covered alley leads to a colony extending to the rear. The houses fronting on the main yard appear as if they might fall at any moment; there are three or four underground rooms, damp, dark, noisome holes, whose occupation is contrary to ordinance, one of which, as will be seen by the illustration, is “To Let.” Of its two rooms about 6 feet high and 10 feet square, the outer one is steeped in gloom and the inner one is wholly dark, while both are damp and repellant. The imagination sickens at the thought of one’s having to exist in such a pen, where a wet earthy smell takes the place of air and the sunlight never enters, where rats run riot, and mould and mildew greet the touch. The rooms are to be had for $5.00 per month, to be paid promptly in advance on penalty of eviction. My last acquaintance here died of rheumatism… whose exterior may be seen in the shed-like extension at the lower left hand corner of the larger drawing, shows a living room with a bedroom at the further end; the latter measuring 8 feet by 5 feet 6 inches, perfectly dark and unaired, in which four persons sleep, while two children sleep on the floor in the outer room. Everything that should be perpendicular or horizontal, is all awry, the roof leaks, the window admits cold air freely…Pointing to the cracked walls and leaky roof, the woman said 'What can we do? Where can we go? My husband earns $6.00 a week, we pay $5.00 a month for shelter but we must put up with the cold and darkness and the damp.'… All these houses are in a condition such as would shock the sensibilities of those who generously imagine that the homes of the poor are not so very uncomfortable after all." (From the Tenement House Inspectors Report, pp. 35-60).

William Henry (W.H.) Drake

Columbia University Libraries' Community Service Society Photographs

1884

Item Number: 972
Photograph Number: MA-269
Box and Folder Number: 620: 55

Drawing

850 x 692