Tenements were first built to house the waves of immigrants that arrived in the United States during the 1840s and 1850s, and they represented the primary form of urban working-class housing until the New Deal. A typical tenement building was from five to six stories high, with four apartments on each floor.

Why was the tenement important?

These laws made landlords repair the tenement so they were a lot safer. The tenements were small apartments where immigrants lived. It took the whole family to pay the rent. ... The tenements were important to New York City because immigrants were able to start a new life and many became successful.

Why did people have to live in tenements?

From the 1850s through the early 1900s, thousands of immigrants arrived in the United States and lived in New York City. ... Because most immigrants were poor when they arrived, they often lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where rents for the crowded apartment buildings, called tenements, were low.