9b. The problem with Urbanization

Take a look at these pictures, and make a list of the problems that you can see. If you have time at the end, go back and brain storm some ideas for how to fix these problems.

1. What issue(s) do you see here?

3. Could you live in this house? What challenges might you face?

5. What problems might this cause for the safety of the public?

6. What would make you NOT want to live here?

7. What do you think happened here?

8. What's wrong with this picture?

Now go back over your answers to these picture and see if you can identify the modern day answers to each of the problem you saw in the pictures. Then go over them as a class.

If you finish before the other groups, read through this:

The immigrant poor lived in overcrowded, unsanitary, and unsafe housing. Many lived in tenements, dumbbell-shaped brick apartment buildings, four to six stories in height. In 1900, two-thirds of Manhattan's residents lived in tenements.

In one New York tenement, up to 18 people lived in each apartment. Each apartment had a wood-burning stove and a concrete bathtub in the kitchen, which, when covered with planks, served as a dining table. Before 1901, residents used rear-yard outhouses. Afterward, two common toilets were installed on each floor. In the summer, children sometimes slept on the fire escape. Tenants typically paid $10 a month rent.

In tenements, many apartments were dark and airless because interior windows faced narrow light shafts, if there were interior windows at all. With a series of newspaper articles and then a book, entitled How the Other Half Lives, published in 1889, Jacob Riis turned tenement reform into a crusade.