The Ten Days That Cooked the Lower East Side

On August 4, 1896, a heat wave settled over New York City and did not lift for ten days. Daytime highs stayed at 90 degrees or hotter, and nights never cooled below 72, which meant the tenements of the Lower East Side never got a chance to shed the heat they had trapped since morning. By the time it broke, the wave had killed about 1,500 people across the Eastern seaboard, most of them working men in their twenties who labored outdoors or in un-ventilated shops and could not simply stay home and wait it out. Theodore Roosevelt, then president of the city's police board, had his officers hand out free ice from station houses to families who had no other way to cool their rooms. It was one of the deadliest weather events in American history, and it happened almost entirely to poor people packed into un-cooled brick buildings a few blocks from City Hall.