Michael P. Rebic

“The Housing of the Working People of Yonkers” a turn–of–the–century survey of the living conditions of the immigrant population in Yonkers was published by Ernest Ludlow Bogart in 1898. Author Michael Rebic describes the study and its findings as a contribution to the WCHS immigration studies during 1992.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, two interrelated factors were profoundly changing the social, political and economic landscape of the United States: urbanization and immigration. As American cities grew at a phenomenal rate and rapid industrialization transformed the urban fabric of metropolitan areas throughout the country during the last years of the nineteenth century, the living condition of city dwellers, especially the working class, began increasingly to occupy the attention of social scientists. Numerous statistical studies of the country’s burgeoning working class, a large part of which was composed of recent immigrants, were undertaken both by government agencies and private charitable groups in an effort to document and, ultimately, to ameliorate the living conditions of America’s working class.

The majority of these studies focused their attention on the country’s largest industrial centers—New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore—while smaller manufacturing towns, such as Yonkers, were generally overlooked. In 1896, however, Yonkers became one of the first of the smaller urban centers to be come the object of such a study. Today, this study offers a rare glimpse of the living conditions of a large part of Yonkers’ working class at the turn of the century.

Information concerning Yonkers was gathered between March 1896 and August 1897 both by the Yonkers Woman’s Institute and by the Civic League, under the direction of Miss Mary Marshall Butler and Mrs. William Sherman. Sixteen streets, representative ofYonkers’ working–class neighborhoods, were surveyed. Over 6,500 people, or one–sixth of Yonkers’ population, participated in the study, which canvassed 1,400 families and investigated a total of 587 buildings. Statistical data reflecting nationality and occupation, the average size of families, earnings, rent payments and other categories were gathered and analyzed to obtain a profile of living standards in Yonkers’ tenement districts. Sanitary conditions among the working class were evaluated by a woman inspector appointed to the Yonkers Board of Health through the influence of the Woman’s Institute and the Civic League. In 1898 this study of Yonkers’ working-class neighborhoods, “The Housing of the Working People of Yonkers,” was published by Ernest Ludlow Bogart under the auspices of the American Economic Association.