Tenement Backyards on Laundry Day
Tenement backyards fly laundry like signal flags using laundry lines shared between buildings. While the residents may have been concerned about keeping their own laundry clean, many tenement dwellers would do laundry for others as another source of income, and a consistent one (if not well-paid) one, as laundry will always need doing.
Much of this freshly cleaned and dried laundry may not actually belong to the people in these tenements. People can be seen on the fire escapes and leaning out windows, putting laundry out and taking it in. On frigid days, the clothes would be strung inside the tenements, crowding out the family and creating yet another fire hazard.
