The winter of 1917 was not a happy time to be a renter in New York City.

It was brutally cold, and shortages exacerbated by World War I left tenants scrounging for coal on the streets and pleading with their landlords to properly heat their homes. Much-needed housing construction was largely stalled, since the war effort had gummed up the production of lumber and other building materials.

Renters’ collective misery ended up changing the city.

They banded together in Harlem, on the Lower East Side and elsewhere and collectively refused to pay rent. Those rent strikes turned tenants into a formidable political force that could not be easily ignored by elected officials.

Within a few years, New York required landlords to keep their homes heated to at least 68 degrees in the winter. The state created housing cooperatives and other programs to help meet the demands of restive voters, and it passed a series of emergency laws that helped set the legal framework for statutes that limit rent increases in some buildings.

The rent strikes and the changes they helped usher in are the subject of a new exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. The exhibit, set to open this weekend, delves into the history of local housing activism.

Today, more than a century after the strikes began, there are clear parallels: New York City’s voters are deeply frustrated about paying soaring rents to live in often subpar conditions, and their frustration is driving political change.

Deep concern over the cost of living, particularly the soaring price of housing, helped fuel a political earthquake earlier this summer.

Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman whose campaign for the Democratic nomination for mayor was focused on affordability, surged past his better-known rivals to win the primary by nearly 13 points.

Now campaigning in the general election, Mr. Mamdani has promised to freeze rents for roughly one million rent-controlled apartments if elected.

The idea helped drive support for his candidacy, and it is not uncommon to see colorful “freeze the rent” posters in windows across the city — a rallying cry with roots in the rent strikes of more than a century ago.

But many landlords and some housing policy experts argue that freezing rent will make it harder for owners to properly maintain rent-stabilized apartments, which could end up hurting renters.

Here are some of the images and objects that will be on display at the museum, beginning on Saturday. They help tell the story of how dissatisfaction over housing has changed New York City, over and over again.

It may not look like it, but this sewing kit represents the culmination of decades of legislation designed to help New York City tenants.

The Amalgamated Housing Cooperative in the Bronx opened to residents in 1927, the year after New York authorized a new, experimental form of housing known as the cooperative. New Yorkers eager to own homes had access to below-market-rate apartments, and could not resell their homes for profit.

The sprawling complex had on-site amenities like child care and a supermarket, where this needle kit was sold starting in the 1950s.

A model bedroom advertising the co-op featured a well-appointed room and wood floors.

The co-op was built with the support of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, and housed many garment workers. Unions’ involvement in housing development helped cement labor as a major political force in city life.

Freezing cold renters used these so-called scutters to scavenge for spare coal on the streets of New York during the winter months in the early 20th century.

New Yorkers living in tenements typically had to find their own coal and shovel it into stoves that would heat a few rooms at a time. Buildings with more middle-class renters sometimes had coal furnaces in the basement, to provide heat throughout the building.

This 1889 image by Jacob Riis helps illustrate just how miserable living conditions could be. This tenement, on Bayard Street in Manhattan, largely housed recent immigrants from Europe, who often slept in shifts.

Residents paid a dollar to join the Chelsea Tenants League, an advocacy group created in the 1930s. The organization published its own newsletter, Tenants Talks, to provide renters with updates on buildings in the neighborhood. On West 28th Street, one landlord tried and failed to raise the rent for installing private toilets.

This 1908 image shows the origin of rent strikes: frustrated tenants talking about their poor housing conditions and trying to determine how to respond. The first wave of strikes were supported by the local Socialist Party.

Disdain for landlords runs deep in New York City history. This flyer from the 1940s, created by a tenants rights’ group that would become the Metropolitan Council on Housing, declares that landlords’ claims that they must raise rent in order to operate buildings are “bunk.”

Then, as now, the situation was complicated: Many landlords in this era were immigrants who rented out rooms to even newer arrivals. Mom and pop landlords in New York today often say they are struggling to keep up with costs and believe they are unfairly lumped in with large management companies.

The city’s real estate industry started creating its own advocacy groups around the turn of the 20th century in response to rent strikes, and some of those organizations maintain huge influence in local politics.

This 1935 photograph shows a typical eviction scene, with belongings piled up on the sidewalk. Neighbors would sometimes stand by and guard each other’s luggage.

Landlords often hired movers or brought along city marshals to physically evict tenants or remove their belongings after winning an eviction in municipal housing court.