Jacob Riis brought national attention to the terrible living conditions in New York City tenements with his groundbreaking book, How the Other Half Lives. Published in 1890, How the Other Half Lives used photographs, illustrations and descriptions to paint a grim picture of life in the slums of the Lower East Side. The book inspired politicians, like Teddy Roosevelt, to step in and act, and was the stimulus behind the first significant New York legislation to curb the evils and abuses so prevalent in the tenement neighborhoods.
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Did You Know?
Teddy Roosevelt accompanied Riis on tours of Mulberry Street and other dangerous New York City neighborhoods.
Jacob Riis was on born May 3, 1849 in Ribe, Denmark, and died on May 26, 1914 in Barre, Massachusetts. Riis was a U.S. newspaper reporter, social reformer, and photographer who shocked the U.S. conscience in 1890 by factual description of slum conditions in his book How the Other Half Lives.
Emigrating to the United States at the age of 21, Riis held various jobs, gaining a firsthand acquaintance with the ragged underside of city life. In 1873 he became a police reporter, assigned to New York City's Lower East Side, where he found that in some tenements the infant death rate was one in 10. Riis employed the newly invented flashbulb technique in photographing the rooms and hallways of these buildings in order to dramatize his lectures and books.
How the Other Half Lives made Riis famous. The response of the future U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt was: “I have read your book, and I have come to help.” The book stimulated the first significant New York legislation to curb tenement house evils. The illustrations were largely line drawings based on Riis's photographs. A reprint in 1971 included 30 photographs on which the original illustrations were based and 70 related Riis photographs.
Of Riis's many other books, the most noteworthy was his autobiography, The Making of an American (1901).
Copyright © 1994-2009 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. For more information visit Britannica.com.
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