Ware and the dumbbell tenement this nickname comes from these buildings unusually shaped floor plan.
Floor plan of a dumbbell tenement.
Riis how the other half lives.
The symmetrical floor plan of the typical old law tenement included four virtually identical apartments per floor three rooms each with the entry opening to the kitchen containing a washtub alongside a sink opposite a wood burning stove feeding into a flue.
Scribner s magazine july 1894 pp.
Shafts located on one or both sides of the apartment provide air and a little light in the rooms that do not face the front or rear of the building.
Flagg the new york tenement house evil and its cure.
Sam bass warner jr.
A five to seven story multiple dwelling unit in urban areas characterized by a long narrow plan with an indentation on each side forming a shaft for light and air.
They taper in the center like the handle of a dumbbell.
The dumbbell shape allowed for air shafts between tenements.
Also called a railroad flat.
Using our teacher designed teacher tested lesson plans students engage in inquiry and learn to use critical thinking to interpret objects oral histories and primary sources while making history relevant to today.
A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access on the british isles notably common in scotland in the medieval old town in edinburgh tenements were developed with each apartment treated as a separate house built on top of each other such as gladstone s land.
This is the source of the module floor plan below.
Also called a railroad flat.
Although the dumbbell did provide one window per room and airshafts admitted light and air into the floors of tenement buildings because of the narrowness of the shafts and the height of the buildings the shafts simply became a stagnant well of foul air.
In railroad apartments the only means of egress from one room is into another room except in the case of the bathroom which can connect to the side of a room and if there.
The floor plan of each floor resembles the outline of a dumbbell.
Studies among the tenements of new york.
Unfortunately the 1879 law did not alleviate the overcrowding and filthy conditions of the tenements as many of the older style of tenements were still in use.
A railroad apartment is a unit with aligned rooms that lead directly into one another without a hallway according to brown harris stevens broker elizabeth lind johnson.
The belknap press of harvard univ.
Each dumbbell reached six stories and housed 300 people in its 84 rooms.
Two bathrooms were located on the landing in the hallway for common use.
Riis the battle with the slum.
Hence its resemblance in plan to a dumbbell.
As a result of this law dumbbell tenements were constructed so called because of the shape of their perimeter.
With tenement museum resources students become historians.
