Lower East Side, New York City
By the end of the Civil War, there were more than 15,000 tenement buildings in New York City. For close to 100 years, millions of New Yorkers lived in these massively overcrowded, multi-family homes in substandard and often unsanitary living conditions.
By the 1950s the worst buildings had been knocked down, but many of the old tenements still stand today (albeit gutted and remodeled), giving Manhattan’s Lower East Side its distinct and iconic appearance.
