How to Use tenement in a Sentence

tenement

noun
  • But what could a nun in a tenement do?
    — Sheila Coronel, The Atlantic, 13 Mar. 2026
  • And many of them were stuck in tenements in large eastern cities.
    — Chris Stirewalt, Fox News, 8 Mar. 2018
  • The tenements came down, but the fight over what to do next continued.
    — Charles V. Bagli, New York Times, 29 Jan. 2018
  • There’s not going to be a tenement or a blue dress or spools of thread at 10 cents each.
    — Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, The Atlantic, 21 June 2022
  • The sky-blue limousine drew up in front of the tenement where Carla lived.
    — Michael Hofmann, Harper's Magazine, 27 Oct. 2020
  • Bowles lived alone in a chilly tenement apartment in a back street of Tangiers.
    — Amy Sutherland, BostonGlobe.com, 15 Sep. 2022
  • Erik is the first to arrive, entering the tenement from the street.
    — Andrea Simakis, cleveland.com, 13 Apr. 2018
  • This is the era of people really waking up to what tenement life was like.
    — Chris Murphy, Vanity Fair, 11 June 2026
  • Rumor has it that a whole blockfront of former tenements there will soon be on the chopping block.
    — Roberta Brandes Gratz, New York Daily News, 15 Feb. 2026
  • Most units in her apartment building have kitchen bathtubs, a relic of the tenement era.
    — Jess Eng, New York Times, 12 Sep. 2023
  • The nearby tenements were crammed with people who earned very little, because times were tough.
    — Literary Hub, 9 Dec. 2025
  • Washington sensed he was being watched from the windows of the tenement.
    — Michael Hofmann, Harper's Magazine, 27 Oct. 2020
  • The novel begins with a deadly fire that destroys two tenements.
    — Danielle Parker, CBS News, 21 Apr. 2026
  • Her tour of the tenements opened her eyes to the horrific living conditions of her city's poor.
    — The Indianapolis Star, 13 Aug. 2016
  • Those living in tenements seldom have access to bank loans and often lack the means to make mortgage payments.
    — Rina Chandran, The Christian Science Monitor, 7 June 2018
  • The Bronx’s fire-prone tenements were dirt cheap, yet wealthy investors in several countries held stakes in them.
    — Daniel Immerwahr, New Yorker, 18 Aug. 2025
  • Plumes of white smoke rose over a row of tenements as firefighters on adjoining rooftops tried to prevent the blaze from spreading.
    — Hollie Silverman, CNN, 19 Dec. 2019
  • His was the stuff of drawing rooms, while the theater of the future belonged to the blowsy kitchens and bedrooms of tenement houses.
    — Brad Leithauser, WSJ, 15 Oct. 2021
  • The Jews toiled in the garment trade, at first in stifling tenements, then in factory sweatshops.
    — Jack Schwartz, WSJ, 21 Oct. 2016
  • No one wants to go back to the days of tenements and apartments with insufficient ventilation or light.
    — Michael Schill, Chicago Tribune, 13 May 2026
  • What if the education system taught kids how to cook good food and grow a garden, even on the balcony of a tenement apartment?
    — Aaron Everitt, STAT, 10 Apr. 2026
  • Two lovers step off a tenement fire escape and pirouette up and down the walls of the building in a sweet and thrilling defiance of gravity.
    — New York Times, 9 June 2021
  • Whereas middle- and upper-class homes had bathtubs by the 1890s, most tenements had none.
    — Jacob Beckert, The Atlantic, 13 Nov. 2025
  • The film starts with Ederle as a child on death’s door with measles in a New York City tenement.
    — Olivia B. Waxman, TIME, 31 May 2024
  • In 1962, a blaze tore through a tenement building, leaving 44 dead.
    — Shawna Kwan, Fortune, 28 Nov. 2025
  • In your tenement in Five Points, or pretty much any place in New York in those days, there were no locks on the doors.
    — Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN, 17 Mar. 2024
  • Then the Lower East Side changed, snuffing out the spirit of the gritty tenement.
    — Ronda Kaysen, New York Times, 30 Jan. 2024
  • Years ago, Simon’s mother grew up in the same tenement building as Ethel Rosenberg.
    — Washington Post, 6 July 2021
  • Occupying the ground floor of a small tenement building, the store, Ellen, is about the size of a master bath in a fancy apartment.
    — New York Times, 5 Nov. 2021
  • Housed on the second floor of an old tenement apartment in D1, 289e is a good place to start exploring it.
    — Marianna Cerini, Condé Nast Traveler, 24 Dec. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tenement.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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