These photographs were taken by Inspectors of the New York City Tenement House Department, 1902-1914. The buildings featured were on Orchard Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It’s been given a make-over in recent times, gentrified, if you will, a term that comes more loaded than George Bush at a frat house party. But it wasn’t great back then. Yuppies, Hipsters and all other newly arrived tribes who demand indoor plumbing, designer shmata, expensive protein, a road that doesn’t liquidise in snow, rain and heat, and the best of everything should appreciate how the area has altered in little over a century. Not all modernisation is regrettable.
Row of outhouses with laundry and fire escapes (1902).
Two women & man in front of outhouses; one woman getting water
Man in kitchen—bedroom with dishes, clothes, irons (1904).
Row of outhouses, laundry and backs of tenement…(1904).
Backyard of tenement (1903).
Dilapidated outhouses (1904).
Via: NYPL
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