Explore the following websites devoted to virtual tours of NYC turn of the century tenements. Give a comparison/ contrast (both) assessment of life in the tenements as opposed to life on the prairies in the western US in the comments section below.
Urban Life:
http://www.tenement.org/Virtual_Tour/index_virtual.html
http://www.thirteen.org/tenement/
Pioneer Life:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/ndfahtml/ngphome.html
http://www.campsilos.org/mod2/teachers/r3.shtml
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People living in the tenents benefited from being within range of civilization, while the families on the praire were pretty much on their own. Though primative, the sod houses were the property of the western settlers to do what they like with. The tenents were rented out so there was not much of an incentive for people to improve them. Space was tight in either place but there was always a chance to enlarge sod houses while the tenents stayed small. Life on the praire was probably alot harder because it was a struggle against the elements just to survive and build a home, whereas there were many more resources to survive in populated areas.
ReplyDeleteI win.
ReplyDeleteThe Tenements in New York and pioneer life are very similar but yet very different. The similarities between both would be that the living conditions were very cramped, and you would live usually in one room. In that one room there would be many functions that would be carried out, business, food preparation, and sleeping. Also the whole family would be in one room and items would be shared between all. The differences between both tenements and pioneer life are that, tenements would be rented out by immigrants and the people would work city jobs. While the pioneers would be rugged people, living on large sections of free or cheap land trying to survive by farming. The pioneers had to build their own houses; and had to be able to survive without having goods readily available to them, like medicine. Tenements were more furnished, with wall paper and home details, than the pioneer sod houses that would have plaster walls and dirt floors. The pioneers would have such few furnishing items because of the distance the people had to travel carrying the house hold items.
ReplyDeleteLife in the temaments was similar to life on the prairies in the western US because both the tenament houses and the sod houses were very small and very large families would live in them. Generally the people that would live there were poor or used to be poor.
ReplyDeleteLife in the tenaments was different than life on the praries because the people in the tenaments were ussualy immagrants. Also the people that lived in the tenament houses were mostlikely factory workers or industrial workers. The people who lived on the praries were farmers. The people on the praries were more inovative because they had to addapt to the bad land and do things like build sod houses and use farming tools ment for farming the tough land. Also some lived in log cabins which they built themselves.
In both living in the tenements and in the praries there was overcrowding in the homes, as well as struggle with sanitation and family life(etc.). However, in the tenaments there were more opportunities for the occupants because they lived in the city/urban area. But along with the opportunities offered in the city, there were obstacles to be overcome as well, disease, cleanliness, etc. There also must have been struggles to find jobs because of competition in the workforce and more competition than in the praries because of the higher population(industry, factory work, etc.).
ReplyDeleteLife in the praries offered not only free land (sort-of), but also the opportunity to establish oneself in their rural society where they oculd develope their land and prosper with their family. Obviously because of the lack of a populated area, there was no competition fr work. however, the social lives of the "prarie people" must have been quite undeveloped because it seemed to be a big deal when the neighbors came to visit. The construciton of sod houses defintely helped "revolutionize" the rural/pioneer living, but clearly the living conditions must have been very low.
kthanks.
Life at tenements were similiar yet different than life on the praires. Life in the tenements were difficult, yet they had a sturdy house to live in, whereas the houses on the praire, made of sod, had to be made by hand and were not necessarily the sturdiest things in the world. In the pictures of the tenements some of the apartments looked broken down and extremly dirty, but others were very neat and quiant. The sod houses on the praire were almost always a mess, because of the structure being made of dirt and using poop as fuel. The people living in tenements usually worked for themselves and ran a shop out of their house. Out in the praire, the people had to work for themselves with farming and doing everything else involved with making a house a home.
ReplyDeleteBoth lifestyles required a lot of work in order to become sucessful and both housing situations are very small which can become overcrowded easily.
The lives of citizens who lived on the prairie as pioneers and in the more industrial setting of tenement apartments in New York City before and around the turn of the century were both similar and quite different in many respects. The housing presented to residents in both of these settings was meager and inadequate to fit the occupant’s needs, each living space being much too small (3 rooms for tenement apartments, 1 room for log cabins/sod houses) to fit the large immigrant families (usually 5+ people) who moved to each location. Also, around the beginning of the existence of tenement housing, before restrictions and standards were set up to support residents, neither locations provided any basic amenities (light, heat, indoor plumbing, running water) to residents directly in their houses. These similarities in a lack of space, basic facilities, and type of inhabitants (immigrants) showed the minor similarities between the two ways of life: New York City or the great plains.
ReplyDeleteThe differences between life in the east and west for couples and families greatly outnumber the similarities between the two. Life provided to citizens in NYC was a much more dense living, with multiple apartments compacted into one building and neighbors sharing space and necessities. Contrary to this, life on the prairies was a much more free living, where very little borders and limitations were provided in the very spread out living style by which they survived. The life in the west also, after the passing of laws regulating requirements for housing in NYC, was much more primitive than in the city, where indoor plumbing and light was provided, while on the prairie light and heat were supplied by a fire and water from a nearby well or stream. The people who lived in these different houses lived very different lives, those living in the city being often employed by factories, businesses, or setting up shop in their small apartments with what skills they had. The main, and usually necessary, employment of people in the west consisted of farming and trading with others, where women would usually work the same jobs as men, unlike in NYC where they would either stay home and care for the house or set of work out of their home.
The largest and most obvious difference between the prairie and tenements are the climates. The climate was much harsher out west in the prairies and the people were stuck to live life more dependently. Both prairies and tenements had large immigrant populations but the tenements had a much larger overall population. Another similarity is that education systems were offered for children in the tenements and prairies. Living space for tenements and prairies were similarly small but prairie owners had the option of expanding because they were not confined to space.
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