Tenement House Stairway

Dirt covers the stairway and walls inside a tenement house in Philadelphia. This is one of a series of photographs that illustrate Emily Wayland Diniwddie's Housing Conditions in Philadelphia (1904), a study conducted under the direction of the Octavia Hill Association, a private organization devoted to improving housing conditions for the poor. In her forty-two page publication, Dinwiddie pointed out the lack of proper ventilation and sanitation in dwellings for Philadelphia's poorest residents.

Citation: Housing Conditions in Philadelphia. F221 v.421. Special Collections, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.