As many as 100,000 people were crammed into tenement-style dwellings in New York's Lower East Side in the latter half of the 19th century. The overcrowded, poorly ventilated tenements became ovens during New York's 1896 heat wave, which killed nearly 1,500 people. Above, the yard of a tenement at Park Avene and 107th Street, circa 1900. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)
