On the right, two taller buildings are five-stories tall with a triangular welcome sign on the cornice, painted black. We see the two adjacent smaller buildings at the left, 691-687 Ninth Avenue, are four-stories tall with a flat roof straight across both. The smaller buildlings are older, constructed of dark stone, are plain and except for window lintels to support the the opening made by the windows, have no decoration.
The two taller buildings on the right, 695-693 Ninth Avenue, are constructed of bright red brick, with taller wider windows. Across the heads of the windows runs a continuous band of creamy =-white stone across the wall which creates a crenellated pattern by going up to the top and down the sides of the window, then moves across the facade until it goes up and over the top of the next window. The crenellated pattern allows the builder to grant superior status to the tenement. The taller buildings are not only larger but brighter and look "newer".
We can date both sets of buildings by their modes of public transportation, as well as their building codes as working class tenements.
The older shorter buildings were contemporary with the Horse Car, in the 1850s, while the newer taller buildings were constructed at the advent of the Elevated trains, in the late 1870s. The 1850 Horse Car, pulled by a horse, actually ran along rails built into the street, like those used by later trolley cars. The Elevated trains ran above ground, on rails at the second story level of the tenements, and reached Hell's Kitchen in 1878.
Street rails for Horse Cars are long gone. But we still see the good-sized squares along the sidewalk curbs -- now filled with trees, bricks and plants -- that originally held the square iron pillars that supported tracks for the Elevated trains overhead. These squares can be studied as perfect examples of urban archaeology.
We can also date this unusual set of two buildings, by the Building Codes of New York City. The New Building code of 1901 required a wider building with a large court in the center to provide air and light to almost every window. This is when they stopped calling building units tenements, and started advertising them as apartments.
In 1901, when the New Building Code was passed, the name "Old-Law Tenement" was given to the previous code of 1878. The 1878 plan required an air-shaft to allow light into the center of a tenement. The plan looks like a dumbbell from above, a name by which the Old Law Tenements are often called.
This Old-Law of 1878 went into effect when the Croton Aqueduct began to supply sufficient water to New York City after 1872. Before that, tenements of the 1840s and 1850s had one toilet for each floor, and it was out in the hall. With four apartments on each floor, the toilet was used by all four apartments. These old tenements have not been described or named. I have in my writings, given them the name "Pre-Law Tenements. They can be recognized by a tiny bathroom window in the middle of the tenement wall, front or rear. These Pre-Law tenements are no more than four stories high, often decorated by arched lintels above the windows, frequently called "eyebrow" lintels.
So we can categorize the two taller set of buildings as "Old-Law Tenements" built between the late 1870s and 1901, and the shorter set as "Pre-Law" of the 1850s-60s. We have seized on the southwest corner of 9th Avenue and 48th Street to study the historic development of tenement architecture in Hell's Kitchen.
by Joe Zito, copyrighted, all rights reserved, originally published in the Clinton Chronicle, August 2008
No comments:
Post a Comment