This is a tenement building on Orchard st, Lower East Side, which is one of the many that sprouted up in the 19th Century. There’s an interesting tenement history in NYC. These apartments targeted immigrants who literally ‘got off the boat’ and were created by opportunists (who were immigrants themselves) to combat overcrowding during the migration influx.

Far from luxurious, each apartment had a ‘front room’ (only room with natural light), kitchen and bedroom at the back and on average 7 people lived in one apartment. They had, no shower, no bath and no toilet (it was only in 1867 when the first of the tenement law was enacted that 1 toilet was required for every 20 people). Garbage was disposed of in boxes set in front of the house. A description printed in the New York Tribune in 1863 summed it up:

“composed of potato-peelings, oyster-shells, night-soil, rancid butter, dead dogs and cats, and ordinary black street mud, (the garbage boxes formed) one festering, rotting, loathsome, hellish mass of air poisoning, death- breeding filth, reeking in the fierce sunshine, which gloats yellowly over it like the glare of a devil whom Satan has kicked from his councils in virtuous disgust.”

Tenement Building. Orchard St, Lower East Side.

day 74: I wake up to a shoot in my lounge room.