Outhouses Persist
By the time the New York City Tenement House Department took this picture, a new law had been passed to try to fix the outhouse situation. The 1901 laws required “In every tenement house hereafter there shall be a separate water close in a separate compartment within each apartment.”
But tenement owners only reluctantly followed the mandate. The bathroom facilities were haphazardly installed, and shoddily maintained. In 1937, approximately 165,000 families were living in buildings without functional indoor facilities. Despite the dilapidation of the outhouses, they continued to be the only reasonable option for the people living in older tenement complexes, despite indoor toilets being a common household item in areas with sewer lines like New York City.
