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Urban Castles: Tenement Housing and Landlord Activism in New York City, 1890-1943. By Jared N. Day. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. xii, 262 pp. Cloth, $47.50, ISBN 0-231-11402-8. Paper, $18.50, ISBN 0-231-- 11403-6.)
With New York real estate prices reaching levels unimaginable only a few years ago and even the crumbling tenements of the Lower East Side and Alphabet City succumbing to gentrification, it is useful to recall the rise and fall of "the tenement owner's city." To a far greater extent than the "outer boroughs," Manhattan has been a location for rental housing-- tenements, to be precise-where landlords and tenants have long had an uneasy relationship. Skillfully building upon earlier studies of housing and sanitary reform, urban land use, and the dynamics of the real estate industry in New York City, Jared N. Day has shed light on that shadowy and often vilified figure, the tenement house landlord.
New York tenements...