ABSTRACT
This chapter looks to the stories told by visiting nurses as they helped the residents of tenements in New York City during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Not only are the accounts themselves narratives, narrative method entails taking these accounts and offering an informed interpretation of the general social conditions that confronted these residents personally. This chapter highlights social tensions related to race, gender and economic deprivation as they impact sensibilities related to interiority. The generalizable findings help designers understand that design praxis cannot be limited to physical arrangements of materials and forms, but must embrace understandings of social class, racial and gender discrimination, and economic limitations, at communal scales.
