1st Tenement house (65 Mott Street)

The building at 65 Mott Street, between Canal and Bayard Streets in the Chinatown neighborhood of Manhattan, was built c.1824 and is the first tenement building in New York City, and possibly the first in the United States. Prior to this, people who did not own a home live in rooming houses or single-family houses that had been converted (sometimes minimally) for multiple family use. 65 Mott was the first building deliberately constructed to house multiple families, with two apartments on each floor, one in the front and one in the back, each of which had a parlor, living room and two bedrooms. Outhouses were in the "yard" in the back. 65 Mott had a smaller footprint that the tenements (which were originally called "tenant houses") that came after, which followed approximately the same model, but which were later regulated by law to provide sufficient light and air to all the residents. With the great influx of immigrants into New York, the tenement provided the solution to the problem of housing them.