An Italian immigrant family in the kitchen of their East Side apartment, date unknown, photographed by Jessie Tarbox Beals. That gas stove to the right looks awfully dangerous.
This must be an old-law tenement; the apartments in these buildings weren’t required to have ventilation in each room. The window facing the kitchen appears to look into a smaller room or closet.
Tags: Italian immigrants in New York City, Jessie Tarbox Beals, old-law tenements, slum life turn of the century, tenement apartments in New York City
Ephemeral New York 
May 10, 2009 at 1:48 pm |
Weird, we had a window just like that on 5th Street and 1st Avenue before they tore it down and put up the high rise they have now. I remember constantly crawling through window into a room of nothing and crawling back out. I never found out what that window was for…even had glass in the frames…a real enigma.
May 11, 2009 at 1:53 am |
I can’t quite figure out what that window was for either. It makes no sense, with glass in the frame and everything. Does anyone know? It’s so common in old-law tenements, many of which still exist today.
May 11, 2009 at 4:42 pm |
my dad was brought up in a tenement just like this. He was born in the bedroom and delivered by a midwife.
He would talk about a window in the “kitchen” (more like and all in one room) and never knew what it was for. So the mystery of it’s use goes back at least before 1924.
May 11, 2009 at 5:23 pm |
My sister Geri, who also grew up in the apartment with an odd window, wrote:
many old apartments used to be comprised of railroad rooms (more than 3 rooms one after the other) with the middle rooms not having any windows to the outside, “fake windows” were built between the row of rooms just for purposes of light and ventilation.
A plausible reason…
May 11, 2009 at 5:58 pm |
That makes sense. A window into another room that gets natural light is better than no window at all.
May 11, 2009 at 6:06 pm |
We may have remembered a recollection that had been forgotten and laid dormant for years onto years…Very cool 😉
May 12, 2009 at 7:51 am |
And finally this came from my brother Roman
I too remember the window between the bedroom and living room. I also remember the windows in Badiak’s apartment (1st avenue & 7th street) which was a railroad flat with a window between each room.
Case closed.
May 19, 2009 at 1:05 am |
I had a narrow railroad apartment with the same window. There were also transom windows over the doorways between rooms. And there were three doors to the hallway. I’m pretty sure that before the dumbbell shape tenement, the pre-law tenement buildings did not have to have airshafts at all. So, to get a little light and air into the rooms, these windows were put in. My building was converted to a dumbbell type later, and the two tiny rooms in the back were each 7′ x 8′.
May 30, 2009 at 7:29 pm |
Hi, just had to comment because my brother’s apartment also had a window like that in Brooklyn and his building was post WWII.
If we think more about it, these windows might be considered the precursor of those fancy french doors that often separate rooms in fancy houses.
July 30, 2009 at 12:52 am |
Those who guessed it was to add light from rooms beyond that had natural light are correct. Here is a link to an archive from 1901 in the New York Times about the law passing and landlords trying to repeal many provisions of the new law.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9A04EEDD1638E033A25750C1A9669D946097D6CF
this is the actual article in PDF format
July 30, 2009 at 1:02 am |
Here is a link to a picture from 1845 or 46 where men are laying the cobblestones on Mercer St between Spring and Broome Sts. The small (two story) corner building on Spring St still stands. It has great resolution and by blowing it up further using a program called Genuine Fractals I was able to see so much detail it was amazing. The cobblestones are still there, one of the few dozen street where no asphalt was put over them.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Laying_the_Nicolson_pavement_in_Mercer_St,_New_York,_by_E._%26_H.T._Anthony_(Firm).png&imgrefurl=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Laying_the_Nicolson_pavement_in_Mercer_St,_New_York,_by_E._%26_H.T._Anthony_(Firm).png&usg=__8xMHn19HLib3p596hVtq6TcMVl8=&h=1255&w=2550&sz=3053&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=M4K0_f6K0-KrFM:&tbnh=74&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3DLaying%2Bthe%2Bpavement%2Bin%2BMercer%2BSt%2Bnew%2Byork%2Blibrary%26imgsz%3Dhuge%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3Djiz%26um%3D1
April 11, 2010 at 1:45 am |
the date is sometime in 1910, this pic is in my text book
March 13, 2018 at 9:51 pm |
There was a law that required tenement building owners to install a second window for cross-ventilation. Many owners got around the more expensive option by just placing a window inside the apartment. They were complying with the law, but it did nothing to help with the air quality of the tenement apartments.
September 8, 2018 at 1:47 pm |
At the tenement museum in NYC, they refer to them as “tuberculosis windows”
September 8, 2018 at 6:33 pm |
Yes, see here! https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/the-tuberculosis-windows-in-city-tenements/
February 25, 2019 at 6:28 pm |
Are there any museums to visit in NY about tenement life in those days. Turn of the century living or the gilded age?
March 24, 2020 at 7:41 pm |
The tenement museum is Worth the visit