Health, Morality, and Housing: The “Tenement Problem” in Chicago

In this article, I trace the history of Chicago's Health Department, exploring when and how housing conditions came to be considered a serious social problem requiring municipal regulation. Although journalists and labor leaders were among the first Chicagoans to link tenement housing to the spread of contagious disease, Health Department officials quickly began regulating the city's housing stock under their own authority. I argue that in attempting to eliminate the dangers of contagious disease, a long-standing public health threat, health officials drew new attention to the dangers of multifamily dwellings and set a precedent for government regulation of living conditions in tenement dwellings.