Been reading this book (thanks, @nyc_ce). It argues that immigrant developers and architects, not upper-class housing reformers, were responsible for improvements in tenement housing in NYC and Boston in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. It’s very good amazon.com/Decorated-Tene…
Tenement kitchen improvements (stoves, running water, hot water heaters) were entirely market-driven, toilets (moving them inside, then within apartments) were a mix of market and regs, baths were the market (shunned by reformers, in fact!) 
This book is so good...better than Plunz’s A History of Housing in NYC. Better story arc, not as encyclopedic. Really gets into the head of an immigrant tenant...you can imagine yourself upgrading to an apt with a private toilet, hot water heater & hall entrance for your boarder
Part of what I like is that the author has some respect for the tenement market process/participants, whereas with Plunz, you can tell his view of the tenements was “this is how the poor made do before we realized we just have to do socialism, or as close as we can get to it”
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