tenement

thumb|300px|High-quality tenements in the Hyndland residential area of [[Glasgow, built 1898–1910]] thumb|300px|Tenements in the Morningside, Edinburgh|Morningside area of [[Edinburgh, featuring atypical decorative lintels, built 1880]] A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. Tenements are common in cities throughout Europe and North and South America, albeit called different names (e.g. conventillos in Spanish, Mietskaserne in German, vuokrakasarmi in Finnish, hyreskasern in Swedish or kamienica in Polish).

From medieval times, fixed property and land in Scotland was held under feudal tenement law as a fee rather than being owned, and under Scots law dwellings could be held individually in a multi-storey building, known as a tenement. In England, the expression "tenement house" was used to designate a building subdivided to provide cheap rental accommodation, which was initially a subdivision of a large house. Beginning in the 1850s, purpose-built tenements of up to six stories held several households on each floor. Various names were introduced for better dwellings, and eventually modern apartments predominated in North American urban living.