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Tenement

For other uses, see Tenement (disambiguation).
High-quality tenements in the Hyndland residential area of Glasgow, built 1898–1910[1]
Tenements in the Morningside area of Edinburgh, featuring atypical decorative lintels, built 1880

A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, in Edinburgh, tenements were developed with each apartment treated as a separate house, built on top of each other (such as Gladstone's Land). Over hundreds of years, custom grew to become law concerning maintenance and repairs, as first formally discussed in Stair's 1681 writings on Scots property law.[2] In Scotland, these are now governed by the Tenements Act, which replaced the old Law of the Tenement and created a new system of common ownership and procedures concerning repairs and maintenance of tenements. Tenements with one- or two-room flats provided popular rented accommodation for workers, but in some inner-city areas, overcrowding and maintenance problems led to shanty towns, which have been cleared and redeveloped. In more affluent areas, tenement flats form spacious privately owned houses, some with up to six bedrooms, which continue to be desirable properties.[1]

Tenements at Park Avenue and 107th Street, New York City, c. 1898–1910

In the United States, the term tenement initially meant a large building with multiple small spaces to rent. As cities grew in the nineteenth century, there was increasing separation between rich and poor. With rapid urban growth and immigration, overcrowded houses with poor sanitation gave tenements a reputation as shanty towns.[3] The expression "tenement house" was used to designate a building subdivided to provide cheap rental accommodation, which was initially a subdivision of a large house. Beginning in the 1850s, purpose-built tenements of up to six stories held several households on each floor.[4] Various names were introduced for better dwellings, and eventually modern apartments predominated in American urban living.[3]

In parts of England, especially Devon and Cornwall, the word refers to an outshot, or additional projecting part at the back of a terraced house, normally with its roof.[5]

  1. ^ a b Watson, Alex (12 January 2018). "13 surprising things Glasgow is famous for". The Scotsman. Archived from the original on 28 March 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2019., links to Why Glasgow is the only place in the UK protecting its tenements Archived 2019-03-28 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Kenneth G. C. Reid; Reinhard Zimmermann (2000). A History of Private Law in Scotland. Oxford University Press. pp. 216–219. ISBN 978-0-19-826778-2. Archived from the original on 2020-08-19. Retrieved 2020-02-17.
  3. ^ a b Mauch, Jason (14 May 2018). Industrialism. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 9781604132229. Archived from the original on 14 May 2018 – via Google Books.
  4. ^ Caves, R. W. (2004). Encyclopedia of the City. Routledge. p. 665. ISBN 978-0415862875.
  5. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 6th ed. Oxford: Oxford University, 2007, ISBN 0199206872, p. 3804.

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