and Fourteenth street. By the
United States Census of 1870, the population of the wards in this
district was reported as follows:

Wards Natives Foreigners Total

4 10456 13292 23748
5 9245 7905 17150
6 9444 11709 21153
7 24130 20688 41818
8 20285 14628 34913
9 33020 14589 47609
10 18851 22580 41431
11 34805 29425 64230
13 19288 14076 33364
14 13379 13057 26436
15 16821 10766 27587
17 46033 49332 95365

Total 255757 222047 477804

[Picture: A NEW YORK TENEMENT HOUSE.]

By the same census, the total population of the city in 1870 was 942,292.
The district included in the above wards is about two miles square, which
would give for this portion of New York an average population of 238,902
to the mile square. The Seventeenth ward covers less than one-fortieth
of the whole area of the island, and contains more than one-tenth of the
whole population.

The total area of the city is twenty-two square miles, and we find that
one-half of its population is cramped within an area of about four square
miles. It is evident, therefore, that they must be housed in a very
small number of buildings, and such indeed is the case.

The section of the city embraced in the wards we have named is filled
with a class of buildings called tenement houses. The law classes all
dwellings containing three or more families as tenement houses, but the
true tenement house is an institution peculiar to New York. There are
about 70,000 buildings in the city used for purposes of business and as
dwellings, and of these, 20,000 are tenement houses, containing about
160,000 families, or about 500,000 people. This would give an average
population of eight families or twenty persons to each tenement house in
the city. In 1867 the number of tenement houses was 18,582. The
following table will show their distribution among the wards at that
time, and their sanitary condition: