New Law Tenement Floor Plan

Despite its shortcomings the dumbbell was the most accepted plan for tenements for over twenty years until the new tenement law was passed in 1901.

New law tenement floor plan.

A model tenement house. A rare example of a tenement which could fulfill the requirements of the new law on a 25 foot wide lot. If you looked at the building from above it would be shaped like a series of dumbbells pushed together with the air shafts being the small space between them you can see a sample floor plan here. The final iteration was the dumb bell building which had larger shafts along the sides in the middle which gave the floor plan the look of that piece of weightlifting equipment.

208 thompson street built 1903. The 1879 law required that every habitable room have a window opening to plain air a requirement that was met by including air shafts between adjacent buildings. Plan of upper floors new york public library digital collections. Note that the new style tenement s footprint if you will was wider with 6 bays across instead of the formerly standard 4 bays.

Irma and paul milstein division of united states history local history and genealogy the new york public library. Plan of first floor. Every room in the new law tenements is light and well ventilated. At least one of the living rooms for each family must have one hundred and twenty square feet of floor space and seventy square feet is the minimum allowance for any room.

The typical floor plan shown for this particular building featured two apartments instead of four in this upscale building built more for the middle to upper class renters. Old law tenements are tenements built in new york city after the tenement house act of 1879 and before the new york state tenement house act new law of 1901. In the early 21st century a typical lower east side or east village street will still be. Accessed september 9 2020.