Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [630]
But the bottom line was determined from above: sublandlords had to pay chief landlords what Griscom blandly termed “a sum that will yield a fair interest on the costs.” But “fairness” was defined in relation to the returns their capital could fetch elsewhere. New York’s bourgeoisie had many outlets for accumulated cash—finance, industry, transportation, and western lands—and would invest in local real estate only if they could garner comparable profits. The same logic dominated the building industry, where the newly incorporated construction companies bid for capital from individuals and institutions; forced to pay high interest rates, building companies cut costs elsewhere, usually by slashing wages of construction workers, lowering housing standards, or both.
Griscom nevertheless believed he could convince “the benevolent capitalist” to build decent housing at a fair rate of profit. The AICP vigorously promoted a bricksand-mortar discussion among builders and capitalists by circulating plans of “model” tenements gleaned from English sources. Well maintained and properly managed, it was argued, they could bring the owner a legitimate 6 percent return. Alas, even respectable Christian businessmen preferred to invest in upper-class housing that brought in 10 percent, new tenement housing that could garner 15 to 25 percent, or old crammed-up artisan housing that could reap 50 to 75 percent, though much of that had to be split with others.
When distressingly few businessmen stepped forward to begin construction, the AICP decided, again taking its cues from English and Continental philanthropists, to do the job itself. In 1855, after frustrating delays and false starts, it opened the largest multiple dwelling yet built in New York City, a six-story structure for eighty-seven families at Mott and Elizabeth streets, just north of the Five Points. Known as the Workingmen’s Home and often described as the city’s first model tenement, it had water closets on each floor, gas lighting, and Croton water. All the apartments were rented to African American New Yorkers, since “they are usually forced into the worst kind of dwellings, and are deprived of most special privileges, and consequently were specially deserving commiseration.” The experiment wasn’t successful, however. Though many rooms lacked windows, and all were absurdly cramped (bedrooms measured eight feet by seven and a half), rents, ranging from $5.50 to $8.50 per month, proved too high for most tenants yet too low to ensure the promised 6 percent. After a dozen years of losing money (and continuing trouble with the “inmates”), the Workingman’s Home was sold to the Five Points House of Industry as a residence for working women.
As it became clear that tenement reform wouldn’t attract private investors, the AICP began to consider the need for government regulation of the housing market. Joined by fire insurers, who thought a stricter building code would reduce their risk exposure, by concerned physicians, who were also seeking to enhance their standing as public experts, and merchants worried about the city’s sinking reputation as a healthy place to do business, the environmentalists persuaded the legislature’s Tenement House Committee to launch a full-scale investigation in 1856.
The legislators proceeded to immerse themselves (a la Dickens) in places like Corlear’s Hook and were duly shocked. “Though expecting to look upon poverty in squalid guise, vice in repulsive aspects, and ignorance of a degraded stamp,” the investigators recounted in conventional sunshine-and-shadow prose, “we had not yet formed an adequate conception of the extremes to which each and all of these evils could reach.” The committee’s Tenant House Report of 1857 declared that housing in New York’s Tenth