How can I find out what my early-20th-century apartment likely looked like when it was first built?

November 7, 2008 6:43 AM

I want to know what my apartment looked like when my great-grandparents' generation was living in it! I'm looking for web-based answers and pictures rather than wordy descriptions that would require a library visit if possible.

I live in a five-story apartment building in Queens, New York that was built in 1916. My apartment still has original floors (!) which are in pretty terrible shape, but it makes me wonder what the place looked like when it was built. Was there gas for a stove at that time? What about electricity? Could the radiators possibly be original? How much have renovations likely changed the layout of the apartment (for example, adding closets where there weren't any before, or putting in individual bathrooms where there might have been a shared lavatory before)?

A diner in my neighborhood has photos of local street corners in the 20s and 30s juxtaposed with photos of the same street corner in, say, the late 80s or 90s. But these are all exterior shots not from the same photographer and I want to know how the interior of buildings would have looked in the teens and early twenties (actually, all of the twentieth century would be interesting).

Where can I find pictures of the insides of apartment buildings in NYC from that era? Or any photographic history of New York or other large American cities to show what living spaces looked like at the time?

posted by purplecurlygirl to society & culture (13 comments total)

The Tenement Museum, online and on the Lower East Side, is a good start.
posted by raconteur at 7:04 AM on November 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

The Tenement Museum? Photos of early 20th century New York City?
posted by crush-onastick at 7:05 AM on November 7, 2008

Shorpy for one. The NYPL has plenty of stuff in their digital collections.
posted by JJ86 at 7:07 AM on November 7, 2008

Have you tried the Queens Historical Society?

Not to be confused with the Queen's Historical Society, of course.
posted by parmanparman at 7:18 AM on November 7, 2008

I was going to say the tenement museum. Better than pictures, just visit. They have tenement-apartment interiors recreated to resemble their appearance in various time periods right up into the 1930s. They are among the most-respected history museums in the country and their research into the exhibits was exacting. You should go! It'll give you more than visuals - it'll give you a completely visceral sense of the atmosphere.
posted by Miko at 7:34 AM on November 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

Its not at all what you're asking for, but i thought you might find it interesting that you can buy a photo of the exterior of every building in nyc from btwn 1939 and 1941
posted by alkupe at 8:11 AM on November 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

Yeah, the Tenement Museum is awesome. Just go!
posted by dame at 8:13 AM on November 7, 2008

Augh, thank you! I'm so excited to be this nerdy!
posted by purplecurlygirl at 8:26 AM on November 7, 2008

Electricity, gas stoves and radiator heat were all 19th century improvements so it's very likely that your 1916 building had all of those.
posted by octothorpe at 8:50 AM on November 7, 2008

To piggyback this question, our new place in Chicago was built between 1898 and 1908 and it appears that most (if not all) of the the interior walls are modern. We know the sewing room used to be the outdoor back porch. We know the master bedroom used to be the dining room (our upstairs neighbor owns the last of six units which still has the built-in breakfront in the room, oh so very jealous!). Otherwise, it's largely speculation on our part how the interior space was arranged. What are the general steps to find out something like this? Are there specific-to-Chicago steps? We're north of the Great Fire boundary, and after it--of course--if that matters.
posted by crush-onastick at 9:06 AM on November 7, 2008

Thanks, octothorpe, I am ashamed that I wasn't exactly sure when these conveniences became widespread (and wikipedia-ing didn't exactly help). My entire understanding of when eletricity was available for the masses comes from a passage in the novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn which talks about retrofitting tenement buildings with electricity in the teens, but doesn't talk about what new buildings had.
posted by purplecurlygirl at 9:58 AM on November 7, 2008

I'm a little off on the Gas Cooking Stove's adoption time, from this article they started getting popular in the first decade of the twentieth century. But given the difficulty of getting coal into an apartment, I'd assume that urban buildings would have been among the earliest adopters.

The first electrical power plant in the world was built right in Manhattan thirty years before your building was built so it's safe to say that by the teens, your building was electrified. If it's like my house, it may still have the original wiring, good old knob and tube.

Radiators were very common by the early twentieth century. My house had them added in after it was built but it dates back to 1870, a generation earlier than your apartment. Before it had radiators, each room had a gas burner set into the fireplace.

Pre-war houses didn't have much in the way of closets since people had much fewer clothes to store so if yours has big closets, they were probably added. My grandfather wore the same shirt to the office, just changing the removable collar everyday. My dad told me that he had exactly three sets of clothes as a child: school, play and church.
posted by octothorpe at 10:57 AM on November 7, 2008

But given the difficulty of getting coal into an apartment, I'd assume that urban buildings would have been among the earliest adopters.

Another reason was that cities could provide the infrastructure for gas, because they had the density to make burying pipes and installing pipes in buildings worthwhile. In rural areas and those with more sprawl, gas (and electric) were later to arrive because the population density was too low to make an investment in public works development make any financial sense.
posted by Miko at 11:15 AM on November 7, 2008