Building a Healthy Black Harlem: Health Politics in Harlem, New ...

Census tract 232—the area bounded by 142nd and 146th streets and Sixth and Eighth avenues—was one of the most densely populated areas within M8B.¹⁷ This tract comprised nine enumeration districts, each equivalent to roughly nine city blocks. The two most densely populated areas within the tract were Enumeration Districts 997 and 998, which possessed 2,572 and 2,500 residents, respectively.¹⁸

One of the most congested apartment buildings in Harlem's Enumeration District 998 was 2460 Seventh Avenue, located between 143rd and 144th streets. Reconstructing a tenement in Harlem, as tables 1.1 and 1.3 attempt to do, provides an opportunity to glimpse a cross section of Harlem family life; determine some of the links between housing poverty, health, and well-being; and see, as near as one can, the lived realities of individuals.

There were 257 people, approximately fifty-four households, residing in the building. The different household sizes and forms reflect the diversity and multifaceted nature of family life and household structures in the community. There were three types of households residing in the building: nuclear families, nuclear families with roomers, and boarding households—a group of individuals with no ostensible biological or marital ties that constitute the household. The rarest type of household was the nuclear family, an example of which was the Stewart household––a nuclear family with only three members. Nuclear families constituted the smallest percentage of households in the building. The Stewart household included Gerald Stewart, the twenty-nine-year-old head of the household; his twenty-nine-year-old wife, Judith Stewart; and their sixteen-year-old son, Edward Stewart. Gerald Stewart immigrated to the United States from Kingston, Jamaica. He married Judith when they were thirteen years old, probably because Judith was pregnant with Edward, whom she gave birth to that year. As was the case with many working-class black families in the community, each family member worked.