clotheslines

"At the time of the 1879 Tenement House Act, which first regulated the city's low-income housing, Mayor Edward Cooper invited a group of prominent businessmen to form the Improved Dwelling Association. The Association invested $300,000 in the first model tenement and by law was limited to a five percent return on its investment. "Constructed in 1882, the tenement was laid out along the perimeter of First and Second Avenues and 71st and 72nd Streets, with an open courtyard in the center, admitting light and air. Fifty years later, Abbott documented this space as a communal laundry line: ropes with pulleys led from apartments to five-story poles imbedded in concrete. "Abbott made two exposures, with the laundry and poles forming different abstract configurations. She later recalled that winter day, the laundry frozen stiff and the children huddled together, too cold to move (McQuaid, 375). "In the 1960s, the tenement was replaced with one of the Upper East Side's many full-block, white-brick apartment buildings." (more) -- Museum of the City of New York

Thanks for sharing . Great SHOT

My great- great grand father George Wright was a Master Confectioner at this address in about 1870. It must have been a confectioners establishment for many years.

This shows St John's Hill running up hill. The first entry of the left is Robb's Entry. the small entry in front of the whitewashed outhouse is the back alley to the rear of buildings on Robb's Entry and to the rear of buildings on St John's Hill which continued to the left just where the small boy can be seen under the lamp.