Division of Tenement House Inspection Annual Reports 1907/1913

This data was prepared by Rosalie Garfinkle as a course project for LIS 2970 Open Government Data in the Master of Library Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

These six historical datasets are transcribed from the annual reports done by the Division of Tenement House Inspection for the Bureau/Department of Public Health of the City of Pittsburgh. The goal of this Division was to canvas working-class housing and improve the living conditions of these tenement houses. Reports were published each year from 1907 to 1913 (with 1907 only showing data for ten months of the year, March-December). In 1914, the Division of Tenement House Inspection and the Division of Sanitary Inspection were combined and began to work together. For a more in-depth history of the Bureau/Department of Public Health and the reports from the Division of Tenement House Inspection, see the readme file included here.

The six datasets included here are data on the violations corrected in tenements houses from 1907-1913; a summary of inspections conducted from 1907-1913; a record of tenement houses in the city in 1912, the number of apartments in houses in 1912; height of tenement houses by story for the front and rear of the building in 1912.

For all 1912 datasets, please refer to this map linked below for context regarding the wards listed in the data.

This data was published by the Department of Public Health and obtained through the University of Pittsburgh’s Archives & Special Collections.

A guide to data from the City's health department can be found here: https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt:US-PPiU-ais197428/from_search/3debdacfbde1f422c76e36d68ea54a7f-3

Support for Health Equity datasets and tools provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) through their Health Equity Initiative.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Public Access Level Comment
Temporal Coverage 1907-03-01/1913-12-31
Geographic Unit Other
Data Notes

This dataset was prepared by Rosalie Garfinkle as part of the Open Government Data course in the Library and Information Science Program at the University of Pittsburgh

Due to the distortion of the microfilm, data for the summary of inspections conducted in 1911 could not be recorded.

Only ten months of data collected for 1907, from March to December.
In the Violations Correction dataset, fields “Stairs_Cleaned_And_Repaired”, “Stairways_Plastered_And_Whitewashed”, and “Walls_Cleaned_And_Plastered” are the same as shown in the published reports from 1907-1909, but from 1910-1913 are separated (e.g. “Stairs_Cleaned” and “Stairs_Repared”). In this dataset they remained combined, meaning the separated data are added together.
When a violation was recorded in only one year, it was left out of the dataset. The following datasets reflect information collected only in 1912: record of tenement houses in the city; the number of apartments in houses; and the height of tenement houses by story for the front and rear of the building. Names of fields are taken directly from the reports and in the language of the time. Descriptions in the data dictionary are based on what could be interpreted from the historic document.

Where “…” is listed in the data in the published reports, it is interpreted as zero, “0”, in the datasets here. “NULL” means the data was not reported in that year of the published report.

According to the University Library System, the Bureau/Department of Public Health existed for the City of Pittsburgh beginning in 1852 through sometime in the mid-twentieth century. Allegheny County's Health Department now serves the City of Pittsburgh.
Related Document(s) Department of Public Health Annual Reports, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1871-1916, AIS.1974.28, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System
Frequency - Data Change Not Updated (Historical Only)
Frequency - Publishing Not Updated (Historical Only)
Data Steward Bob Gradeck
Data Steward Email Bob Gradeck