Promoting Public Health

by Carolyn Ristau

In the 19th century, immigrants began arriving in large numbers in the coastal cities of the United States, and particularly in New York City. Some of these immigrants helped to build the National Road and the Erie Canal that fueled the country’s first westward expansion. In New York City, dense and cheap tenement housing were built quickly to house all the immigrants entering the city. The poor design of these buildings combined with the limitations of the existing sewer systems created breeding grounds for disease.

Wealthy people primarily chose to solve the problem on an individual basis by using their money to move out instead of using it to help build better. Governments and proto-Planners began stepping in to try and fix the problems created by dense, cheap, poorly ventilated housing insufficiently served by overloaded sewers. Building Codes were developed including regulations that eventually found a home and expanded within zoning ordinances.

Notable examples of these new laws as established in New York City include:

• Tenement House Act of 1867

  • Defined “tenement”

  • Required fire escapes and windows in each room

• Tenement House Act of 1879

  • Established a maximum lot coverage

  • Required light/air shafts (developers responded with the dumbbell building plan)

• Tenement House Act of 1901

  • Outlawed the dumbbell building plan

  • Required lighting, ventilation, and indoor bathrooms

  • Established a minimum size requirement

In addition to laws like these, new ways of laying out cities were implemented. Frederick Law Olmsted was a landscape architect and a planner, before planning became recognized as a profession.* He and Calvert Vaux designed Central Park in the 1850s to bring health, light, and nature to all. However, some of the land designated for the park was already built up. Eminent domain was used to acquire the land. A community of African-American homeowners at Seneca Village was forced to sell and their homes were demolished to make way for Central Park.

Another of Frederick Law Olmsted’s famous projects was the 1868 plan for Riverside, Illinois. This plan broke with the grid approach designed for safety to focus on a curvilinear approach designed for health. (Zoning protects “health, safety, welfare, and morals.”) Olmsted believed winding streets and single-family detached dwellings were the best way to ensure that everyone had access to a bit of green — a bit of nature.

*Note: His son, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. was the first president of the American City Planning Institute, established 1917.

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Source & Inspiration:

Episode 9: “Civilization is Crumbling” from the Very Unofficial AICP Study Guide podcast

Tenement Homes: The Outsized Legacy of New York’s Notoriously Cramped Apartments. Carmen Nigro, New York Public Library. June 7, 2018. (accessed April 22, 2023)

Tenement House Act of 1901. Smithsonian American Art Museum. (accessed April 22, 2023)

Before Central Park: The Story of Seneca Village. Central Park Conservancy. January 18, 2018. (accessed April 22, 2023)