Solving the tenement puzzle

I'll be giving the illustrated lecture Solving the Tenement Puzzle again, this time at the Neighborhood Preservation Center/Historic Districts Council, 232 East 11th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), Wednesday, September 25, 6:30pm. Light refreshments will be served.

The talk involves the whole social history of 19th century New York, New York's wild politics, economy, real estate and land use, the development of the immigrant ghetto, speculation, arts, culture and reform. Using the photography of Stefania Zamparelli and Amy Chin, we'll read it all on the face of the tenements. And we'll debunk popular - and even historians' - misconceptions about the tenement.

I'll also address the surprising paradoxes of the immigrant real estate economy in which land rent declines as building rent rises, and the quality of living space (a use value) declines as price (exchange value) increases, contrary to the market outside the immigrant quarter. 

Solving the Tenement Puzzle: dispelling myths and misconceptions of an architecutral vernacular.