[Picture: A NEW YORK TENEMENT HOUSE.]
By the same census, the total population of the city in 1870 was 942,292.
The district included in the above wards is about two miles square, which
would give for this portion of New York an average population of 238,902
to the mile square. The Seventeenth ward covers less than one-fortieth
of the whole area of the island, and contains more than one-tenth of the
whole population.
The total area of the city is twenty-two square miles, and we find that
one-half of its population is cramped within an area of about four square
miles. It is evident, therefore, that they must be housed in a very
small number of buildings, and such indeed is the case.
The section of the city embraced in the wards we have named is filled
with a class of buildings called tenement houses. The law classes all
dwellings containing three or more families as tenement houses, but the
true tenement house is an institution peculiar to New York. There are
about 70,000 buildings in the city used for purposes of business and as
dwellings, and of these, 20,000 are tenement houses, containing about
160,000 families, or about 500,000 people. This would give an average
population of eight families or twenty persons to each tenement house in
the city. In 1867 the number of tenement houses was 18,582. The
following table will show their distribution among the wards at that
time, and their sanitary condition:
No. of Tenement In bad sanitary condition
from
Wards. Houses. any cause.
1 275 175
2 - -
3 40 24
4 500 300
5 300 180
6 600 360
7 1847 890
8 850 546
9 60 434
10 430 196
11 2400 1200
12 208 104
13 550 275
14 550 346
15 200 132
16 1300 433
17 2305 1138
18 & 21 2276 1516
19 761 380
20 1250 417
22 1200 800