Essay about The Tenement Museum

1. What are the three distinct classes of homes in the tenement houses? In what ways does each reflect the needs and resources of the renters?

Eventually, people grew tired of all the tragedies and corruption during this time period and started trying to reform. For the poor people living in the tenement houses, there were journalists known as "muckrakers" that went into these homes and took pictures and wrote about them. People then seen how these people lived and things started getting better for the poor. There were settlement houses established that provided private charities to help them out. The workers in these houses taught classes to the mothers about proper child care and taught English to the immigrants. The lives of the poor gradually got better over

One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

All their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine…. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny…. Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in my own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.

Tenement buildings are run down buildings, mostly in the city. Poor families and mostly poor immigrants would live inside these buildings. Tenement buildings were very unhealthy to live in. A danger that families had to face in these buildings was that they were run down. Run down buildings could fall apart and the ceilings could be tore. Also, the buildings could have mold and people can get sick from breathing in mold, laying on mold, or ingesting mold. Tenements were also small and crowded with people, so if someone gets sick in the tenement it will spread very fast to the whole family. Tenement buildings are also very unsanitary. There were outhouses outside the buildings and these outhouses would stink up the neighborhood. Outhouses are unsanitary because the waste inside them would be stuck inside them for a long time and that can attract bugs. Furthermore, outside these tenements in the backyard, were mud and animal feces all over the place. Along with the mud and animal waste children would try to play outside but, it would be to dirty for them to go outside and play. Fires were one of the many dangers that people in tenement buildings had to face. If there was a fire it would be hard for tenement residents to evacuate the building because there was no fire escapes. Likewise, tenements residents could also have fire hazards like cigarettes or

Jane Addams and her colleague, Ellen Gates Starr, founded the most successful settlement house in the United States otherwise known as the Hull-House (“Settlement” 1). It was located in a city overrun by poverty, filth and gangsters, and it could not have come at a better time (Lundblad 663). The main purpose of settlement houses was to ease the transition into the American culture and labor force, and The Hull-House offered its residents an opportunity to help the community, was a safe haven for the city, and led the way through social reform for women and children.

This essay will explicate a section of Beryl Satter’s book Family Properties. This section argues that the white population of Chicago took part in restrictive covenants or legally binding contracts that prevented the sale of properties to colored people in an effort to confine Chicago’s colored population to specific sections in the city. The purpose of this paper is to explicate a section of Family Properties through analysis of structure, tone, and imagery. It will then identify how the evidence relate to one another, and possibilities of meaning. Lastly this essay will conclude with summarizing my results and examining how using explication as a textual tool affects my approach to a reading.

Life in tenements was tough because as the population was increasing exponentially; the quality of life was becoming increasingly crowded and unsanitary. Since these buildings were in high demand, housing over two thirds of the population of New York, they were commonly made of cheap materials. Maks’ family’s rooms were not well made because “the ceiling is tin. The floor is wood. As for the walls, they’re all faded green with a few cracks” (Avi 54). The buildings themselves were packed with inhabitants so that the landlords could pack more money in their back pockets. The tenement flats were very dimly light, which left many lowlifes living in low light. There was a lack of light put on the subject, and some of the regulations to have better sanitation

In the detailed story of an impoverished family during the late 1900’s, Jeannette Walls describes her experience from the young age of 3, up until adulthood. The family of 6, with Rex Walls as the father, Rose Mary as the mother, and her three siblings, Lori, Brian and Maureen, were constantly moving throughout the country with little to no food or cash. The memoir shows how dysfunctional the family was, but never seemed to force the reader to condemn the parents. In a life of poverty, the have to move for own to town, and often lived in various mining towns. Although they each found something they learned to love (like Jeannette’s rock collection) in the desert, they had to leave them behind once Rex’s alcoholism only worsened, and they ran

Gilbert Osofsky’s Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto paints a grim picture of inevitability for the once-exclusive neighborhood of Harlem, New York. Ososfky’s timeframe is set in 1890-1930 and his study is split up into three parts. His analysis is convincing in explaining the social and economic reasons why Harlem became the slum that it is widely infamous for today, but he fails to highlight many of the positive aspects of the enduring neighborhood, and the lack of political analysis in the book is troubling.

For far too long, African Americans have been neglected the rights to decent and fair housing. In “In Darkness and Confusion,” William Jones expresses his discontentment with the almost cruel living conditions of the ghettos in Harlem as he stated, “It ain’t a fit place to live, though” (Petry 261). William was especially motivated to move to a better home to protect his wife, Pink’s, ailing health. William and Pink searched high and low for more decent places to live – however, they simply could not afford decent. Though marketed to those with lower than average incomes, the ‘better’ housing for blacks were still deficient and extremely pricy. In

The immigrants from abroad and the African-Americans both left their homelands of restricted opportunities and sought to find better ones. The African-Americans came without proper clothing and skills, unaware of the future obstacles ahead. Their environment and surroundings were significantly different in the South than the lively cities in the North. Before migrating, the African-Americans lives consisted of mainly working in the fields in the blistering, hot sun, or working as servants or tenants for white property owners; they had never laid eyes upon a building or factory. For the immigrants, coming to urban America was an enormous change as well. They were oblivious to the American culture, American politics and economics, and were unable to read or speak English, in most cases. While settling in the northern cities, there were certain harsh conditions that the African Americans along with the immigrants experienced. They both were forced to live with their families in small, unsanitary living spaces due to the intense persecution and racialization from American outsiders. Families in neighborhoods grouped together, and each family member contributed economically to the family income. To relieve these challenges and harsh conditions, both African-American and immigrant groups were obliged to do certain tasks in the new, metropolitan surrounding.

How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890) was an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. It served as a basis for future "muckraking" journalism by exposing the slums to New York City’s upper and middle classes. This work inspired many reforms of working-class housing, both immediately after publication as well as making a lasting impact in today's society. Vivid imagery and complex syntax establish a sympathetic tone which Riis uses to expose poverty to the general public and calls upon them to take action and make a difference.

Positioned alongside Central Park within the heart of New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and most influential art museums in the world. The Met houses an extensive collection of curated works that spans throughout various time periods and different cultures. The context of museums, especially one as influential as the Met, inherently predisposes its visitors to a set of understandings that subtly influence how they interpret and ultimately construct meanings about each individual object within a museum. By analyzing two separate works on exhibit at the Met, I will pose the argument that museums offer a unique expression of a world view that is dictated through every element of its construction.

The lowborn workers toiled away for hours in physically exhausting jobs only to afford apartments that were sterile and cold. “There were some nine cots in the place . . . he was sick of the bareness and privation connected with his venture” (Dreiser, 304). The pay affected the men and woman’s own mode of life. They were forced to share living spaces with other families and more often than naught, had to bunk with complete strangers. The very comforts associated with a home, such as wood and furniture, were often too large of an expense. Even with Governmental/ Charity handouts the citizens had no money in which they could afford better living conditions. The rooms they were given to stay in were cold and sterile, and they were not guaranteed a place to stay every night.