Jacob August Riis was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist, and social documentary photographer. He contributed significantly to the cause of urban reform in the United States of America at the turn of the twentieth century. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He endorsed the implementation of "model tenements" in New York with the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. Additionally, as one of the most famous proponents of the newly practicable casual photography, he is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his very early adoption of photographic flash.
An apartment, flat, or unit is a self-contained housing unit that occupies part of a building, generally on a single storey. There are many names for these overall buildings. The housing tenure of apartments also varies considerably, from large-scale public housing, to owner occupancy within what is legally a condominium, to tenants renting from a private landlord.
How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890) is an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. The photographs served as a basis for future "muckraking" journalism by exposing the slums to New York City's upper and middle classes. They inspired many reforms of working-class housing, both immediately after publication as well as making a lasting impact in today's society.
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. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, in Edinburgh, tenements were developed with each apartment treated as a separate house, built on top of each other. Over hundreds of years, custom grew to become law concerning maintenance and repairs, as first formally discussed in Stair's 1681 writings on Scots property law. In Scotland, these are now governed by the Tenements Act, which replaced the old Law of the Tenement and created a new system of common ownership and procedures concerning repairs and maintenance of tenements. Tenements with one or two room flats provided popular rented accommodation for workers, but in some inner-city areas, overcrowding and maintenance problems led to shanty towns, which have been cleared and redeveloped. In more affluent areas, tenement flats form spacious privately owned houses, some with up to six bedrooms, which continue to be desirable properties.
The history of New York City (1855–1897) started with the inauguration in 1855 of Fernando Wood as the first mayor from Tammany Hall, an institution that dominated the city throughout this period. Reforms led to the New York City Police Riot of June 1857. There was chaos during the American Civil War, with major rioting in the New York Draft Riots. The Gilded Age brought about prosperity for the city's upper classes amid the further growth of a poor immigrant working class, as well as an increasing consolidation, both economic and municipal, of what would become the five boroughs in 1898.
The Iconography of Manhattan Island is a six volume study of the history of New York City by Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, published between 1915 and 1928 by R. H. Dodd in New York. The work comprehensively records and documents key events of the city's chronology from the 16th to the early 20th centuries. Among other things, it shows the evolution of the Manhattan skyline up to the time of publication.
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum is a museum and National Historic Site located at 97 and 103 Orchard Street in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The museum's two historical tenement buildings were home to an estimated 15,000 people, from over 20 nations, between 1863 and 2011. The museum, which includes a visitors' center, promotes tolerance and historical perspective on the immigrant experience.
Mills House No. 1 or the Mills Hotel at 160 Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City was built as a hotel for poor men. It was funded by banker Darius Ogden Mills and designed by Ernest Flagg and opened in 1897. The building is now The Atrium.
Albion Fellows Bacon was an American social reformer and writer from Evansville, Indiana. As Indiana's foremost "municipal housekeeper," a Progressive Era term for women who applied their domestic skills to social problems plaguing their communities, Bacon had a range of reform interests. She is best remembered for her efforts to improve housing standards and her work on tenement reform. A recognized expert in the field of housing reform, Bacon was persistent in her efforts to secure passage of legislative proposals for the issue, which resulted in passage of housing legislation in Indiana in 1909, 1913, and 1917. Bacon earned a national reputation as a social reformer that resulted in her appointment to the President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership and served on its standards and objectives committee.
New Law Tenements were built in New York City following the New York State Tenement House Act of 1901, so-called the "New Law" to distinguish it from the previous two Tenement House Acts of 1867 and 1879. New Law tenements are distinct from "Old Law" and "pre-law" tenements both in structural design and exterior ornament.
Old Law Tenements are tenements built in New York City after the Tenement House Act of 1879 and before the New York State Tenement House Act of 1901. The 1879 law required that every habitable room have a window opening to plain air, a requirement that was met by including air shafts between adjacent buildings. Old Law Tenements are commonly called "dumbbell tenements" after the shape of the building footprint: the air shaft gives each tenement the narrow-waisted shape of a dumbbell, wide facing the street and backyard, narrowed in between to create the air corridor. They were built in great numbers to accommodate waves of immigrating Europeans. The side streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side are still lined with numerous dumbbell structures today.
First Houses is a public housing project in the East Village, Manhattan, New York City and was one of the first public housing projects in the United States. First Houses were designated a New York City Landmark and National Historic Landmark in 1974. They are managed by the New York City Housing Authority.
The Jacob Riis Houses are a public housing project managed by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) in the East Village in New York City. The project is located between Avenue D and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, spanning two superblocks from 6th Street to 13th Street. The project consists of thirteen buildings, between six and 14 stories each, containing 1,191 apartment units.
109 Washington Street is a five-story tenement in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City, within the area once known as Little Syria. Due to demolitions connected to the construction of the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel and the World Trade Center, it stands as the last tenement on a portion of lower Washington Street that has been estimated by Kate Reggev to have contained around 50 tenements. After September 11, 2001, its proximity to the World Trade Center site made it the subject of some media attention, including a nationally syndicated radio story about the experiences of its residents on the day of the attack. In recent years, community officials, activists, and preservationists have advocated for its designation as a landmark as part of a mini-historical district with the connected buildings of St. George's Syrian Catholic Church and the Downtown Community House.
Lawrence Turner Veiller (1872–1959) was an American social reformer of the Progressive Era in New York. He was a major figure in the Good government and urban planning movements of the early twentieth century.
Columbus Park formerly known as Mulberry Bend Park, Five Points Park and Paradise Park, is a public park in Chinatown, Manhattan, in New York City that was built in 1897.
Gannon and Hands, founded in 1894, was the first partnership of women architects in the United States. Its partners were Mary Gannon (1867-1932) and Alice Hands. In the firm's very short existence, it became known for innovative approaches to low-cost urban housing.
Tenement housing in Chicago was established in the late 19th and into the early 20th centuries. A majority of tenement complexes in Chicago were constructed in the interest of using land space and boosting the economy. These tenements were built quite tall, often exceeding 3 stories, to accommodate as many low-income tenants as possible. This was possible as Chicago had not set a height limit to residential buildings, allowing landlords to create towering, cramped buildings with many rooms to generate as much revenue as possible. By the beginning of the 20th century, tenement housing in Chicago was generally divided based on ethnicity, including sections such as Polish, African American, Italian, and Greek ethnic neighborhoods.
Emily Wayland Dinwiddie (1879–1949) was an American social worker, housing reformer, and advocate for children's welfare.
Jane Elizabeth Robbins (1860–1946) was an American physician and social worker. She was a pioneer in the settlement house movement, founding the Rivington Street Settlement with Jean Gurney Fine in 1889. Robbins advocated for civic reform and on behalf of residents of tenement housing and immigrant families. She graduated from Smith College and taught obstetrics at the Women's Medical College of the New York Infirmary. She headed settlement houses in New York's Lower East Side, Cleveland, and Baltimore. She worked with the Red Cross and served as a nurse in the Spanish–American War and World War I, later working in Italy and Greece.
