Floor Plan Of A Dumbbell Tenement

The dumbbell shape allowed for air shafts between tenements.

Floor plan of a dumbbell tenement.

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. With tenement museum resources students become historians. Also called a railroad flat. Riis the battle with the slum.

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. Hence its resemblance in plan to a dumbbell. They taper in the center like the handle of a dumbbell.

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. Each dumbbell reached six stories and housed 300 people in its 84 rooms. The belknap press of harvard univ. The winner was james e.

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. Riis how the other half lives. 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. Ware and the dumbbell tenement this nickname comes from these buildings unusually shaped floor plan.

Scribner s magazine july 1894 pp. 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. Two bathrooms were located on the landing in the hallway for common use. Sam bass warner jr.

This is the source of the module floor plan below. As a result of this law dumbbell tenements were constructed so called because of the shape of their perimeter. Flagg the new york tenement house evil and its cure. 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 floor plan of each floor resembles the outline of a dumbbell. 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. The floor plan of each floor resembles the outline of a dumbbell.