A considerable portion came from business buildings and private residences on much of the very land which New York City once owned and which was corruptly squirmed out of municipal ownership. For the large rentals which they were forced to pay, the business men recouped themselves by marking up the prices of all necessities. Another, and a very preponderate part, came from tenement houses. Many of these were also built on land filched from the city. And such habitations! Never before was anything seen like them. The reports of the Metropolitan Board of Health for 1866, 1867 and succeeding years revealed the fact that miles upon miles of city streets were covered with densely populated tenements, where human beings were packed in vile rooms, many of which were dark and unventilated and which were pestilential with disease and overflowed with deaths. In its first report, following its organization, the Metropolitan Board of Health pointed out: The first, and at all times the most prolific cause of disease, was found to be the very insalubrious condition of most of the tenement houses in the cities of New York and Brooklyn. These houses are generally built without any reference to the health and comfort of the occupants, but simply with a view to economy and profit to the owner. They are almost invariably overcrowded, and ill-ventilated to such a degree as to render the air within them constantly impure and offensive. Here follows a mass of nauseating details which for the sake of not overshocking the reader we shall omit. The report continued: The halls and stairways are usually filthy and dark, and the walls and banisters foul and damp, while the floors were not infrequently used ... [for purposes of nature] ... for lack of other provisions. The dwelling rooms are usually very inadequate in size for the accommodation of their occupants, and many of the sleeping rooms are simply closets, without light or ventilation save by means of a single door.... Such is the character of a vast number of tenement houses, especially in the lower part of the city and along the eastern and western border. Disease especially in the form of fevers of a typhoid character are constantly present in these dwellings and every now and then become an epidemic.[155]