Psychology & SocietyHow the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New YorkJacob A. Riis![How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York]()
How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York
Jacob A. Riis
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In 1890, Jacob Riis, a police reporter for New York newspapers, took his readers into the crowded tenement buildings of the Lower East Side, where hundreds…
Catalogue details
- Author
- Jacob A. Riis
- Category
- Psychology & Society
- Language
- English
- Source
- Project Gutenberg
About this book
In 1890, Jacob Riis, a police reporter for New York newspapers, took his readers into the crowded tenement buildings of the Lower East Side, where hundreds of thousands of immigrants lived in dark, airless rooms. He describes the families crowded into single rooms, the sweatshops, the cheap lodging houses and the street children who slept in alleys, and he examines each immigrant community in turn, sometimes with the prejudices of his day. His photographs, taken by the new flash powder in rooms that had never seen light, made the misery impossible to ignore.
Context and significance
Riis, himself a Danish immigrant who had known poverty, helped bring about housing reforms, and the young Theodore Roosevelt, then police commissioner, became his ally. The book is a founding work of documentary photography and reporting. Compare Jack London's study of London's East End, The People of the Abyss, and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.