The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age

Celebrate the release of The Decorated Tenement by Zachary J. Violette with an illustrated book talk. In his book, Violette provides a reexamination of working-class architecture in late nineteenth-century urban New York. The “decorated tenement” exemplifies a wave of new buildings constructed by immigrant builders and architects, using ornament as an entry point to reconsider the roles of the tenement in improving housing for the working poor.

Zachary J. Violette has a Ph.D. in American and New England Studies from Boston University. Violette is an awardee of the H. Allan Brooks Traveling Fellowship for travel in Central Europe. He serves on the Board of the Vernacular Architecture Forum and is a lecturer at Parsons/The New School of Design in New York. He is currently researching a follow-up volume to The Decorated Tenement on the inner suburban apartment house in the early twentieth century.

This event is accessible, with ten stairs up to the lobby. There is a lift for wheelchair accessibility.