Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ...features so far as the construction, location and surroundings of each building would allow of the necessary alterations. The early attempts to enfor the provisions of this act met, as was expected, with a good deal of opposition on the part, of landlords and agents, and it was not until these were made through the courts to feel that the Board was in earnest, that they _began to yield gracefully to the requirements of the law. After considerable experience in dealing with some of the worst class of buildings, it was decided to exercise a greater degree of stringency, and to extend the work to all houses that came within the legal meaning of a tenement house, however slight the violation. As an instance of the rate at which this work was prosecuted, I might state that during the year 1869, there were in New York 39,270 bed-room windows and 1,922hall ventilators inserted, and a corresponding number of other violations corrected., The result of this was to improve very materially the condition of New York tenements, and yet as the public became more interested and better educated in sanitary matters, further improvements were loudly demanded; and in response to a great public uprising in behalf of the tenement population, additional legislation in the form of amendments to the law was obtained in 187 9. ' The main provisions of these amendments were: Regulation of distance between front and rear houses, forbidding the placing of any tenement nearer than ten feet from the rear line of the lot, limiting the portion of ground to be covered by any such building to sixtyfive per cent. of the area of the lot, and requiring 'that each sleeping room shall have at least one window of not less than twelve square feet area, admitting light...