If the statistics gathered are any indication of employment opportunity in the city of Yonkers as a whole, it was evidently very good, for only 2.4 percent of those who made up the study were reported as out of work. The majority ofYonkers’ population, almost two– thirds, were classified as laborers, most of whom were employed in one of the city’s three carpet mills or three hat shops. Among the groups identified above, 28 per cent of the Irish surveyed were employed in Yonkers’ carpet industry and an equal number of“Slavs” in the hat factories. The only group completely unrepresented in either the carpet or hat industry was the African– Americans, the largest percentage of whom were categorized as day laborers or in domestic and personal services. Italians were chiefly involved in trade, transportation or the hat industry and had the highest rate of unemployment (8 percent), while the “American” population had the largest percentage of workers in trade and transportation.

Yonkers Hat Factory, WCHS Postcard Collection

In terms of crowding, or the number of people per dwelling unit, Yonkers’ working–class citizens were considerably better off than those residing in the very largest urban centers of the period, although they did suffer disproportionately in terms of overcrowding in housing when compared with national and regional levels. While on the average, 8.55 persons occupied a dwelling in Yonkers, only 5.45 did so in the country, 6.70 in the state, and 6.29 in the county. Of 124 cities enumerated in the 1890 census as having populations over 25,000, only nine were listed as having more persons to a dwelling than Yonkers. Yonkers ranked tenth among the cities in overcrowding, though 93rd in regard to size! Almost half of Yonkers’ population, or 45.93 percent, lived in dwellings with 11 or more people.

In terms of the number of people per room in a typical dwelling unit, Yonkers’ working class was also relatively well off in comparison with laborers studied in other cities. New York had an average number of 1.88 per room; Philadelphia, 1.47; Chicago, 1.37; and Baltimore an incredible 3.15 persons per room. Yonkers, on the other hand, had an average number of 1.05 persons per room. In Clinton Street, where the population consisted mainly of “Slavs,” overcrowding in the dwelling unit was the worst, and it was noted that a contributing factor was the lodgers frequently taken in by Hungarian families to help pay the rent. Moreover, it was noted that as larger dwelling units were cheaper per room to rent, the rent structure itself encouraged the practice of taking in boarders. The largely “American” population of Webster Avenue enjoyed the most spacious quarters.

The predominant type of housing in Yonkers was the single–family house, although approximately a quarter (23.8 percent) of the population lived in two–family tenement houses. These were usually the least comfortable, as they had originally been constructed as single–family dwellings, and occupants needed to share spaces that had been designed for only one family A majority (60 percent) of the working–class population investigated in the 1896 study lived in a two– or three–story frame tenement building containing three dwelling units. These buildings were described as “of a severe, square, box–like type, without the slightest pretension to beauty or individuality, and the view of the streets in which they are situated is depressing in the extreme.”