Tenement Outhouses
The outhouses were merely open seats over a large hole in the ground. Unlike rural areas, where the hole could be covered up and the outhouse moved, urban dwellers couldn’t just move the hole. It had to be pumped out manually. Men would come to the outhouses after dark, with outhouse traffic at its lightest, and shovel the waste, animal carcasses, garbage, and anything else thrown onto the pit.
They put their loads into containers and put them on a cart, to be hauled away. This refuse, called ‘night soil,’ then ended up dumped into empty lots in the Upper West Side or dumped into the East River or Hudson River to flow away from the city. The New York State Tenement House Act of 1901 required indoor toilets and bathtubs in all new apartments built in the city, but the mandate didn’t impact tenements that were already built.
