Tenement Life & How the Other Half Lives, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Innovation

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Directions : Read the historical context below and answer the questions that follow.

Historical Context : In the 1800’s, New York City grew at a rapid pace and became a thriving city of culture, wealth, and innovation. However, not all residents were wealthy. Many lived in total poverty and dangerous living conditions, especially new immigrants. Jacob Riis immigrated to the United States in 1870; first working as a carpenter, he eventually was able to secure a job as a news reporter at The New York Tribune. After some time, he was assigned to be a police reporter and reported on crimes in the New York City slums and tenements. This gave him a firsthand look at the tenements of the Lower East Side of Manhattan where most of the newly arriving immigrants lived. After months of documenting the unsafe living conditions in tenements, Jacob Riis gave a speech and displayed his photographs of the tenements at a church; the talk was titled How the Other Half Lives.

Analysis Questions:

1. Sourcing: How do you think Jacob Riis’ perspective as an immigrant himself might have motivated him to capture the images of tenement housing? 2. Predict: Why do you think Jacob Riis titled his collection of images How the Other Half Lives?

a. Considering the title, whose attention do you think he was hoping to capture?

3. Analysis: What do you think Jacob Riis wanted viewers of these images to walk away thinking about?

a. What kinds of action or changes do you think he was trying to motivate or inspire?

4. Corroboration: If you wanted to confirm that these images illustrated the true conditions of New York City tenements between 1890 - 1910, what other kinds of historical documents could you research?

Directions: Read the excerpt from How the Other Half Lives , a book that Jacob Riis published in 1890. The book had text as well as the images he had already displayed of New York City tenements. Using the excerpts, answer the analysis questions that follow.

Chapter 2: The Awakening

“...Today, what is a tenement ?...It is generally a brick building from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor which, when used for the sale of liquor, has a side opening for the benefit of inmates and to evade the sunday law; four families occupy each floor, and a set of rooms consists of one or two dark closets, used as bedrooms, with a living room feet by ten. The staircase is too often a dark well in the centre of the house, and no direct through ventilation is possible, each family being separated from the other by partitions. Frequently the rear of the lot is occupied by another building of three stories high with two families on a floor...The statement once made a sensation that between seventy and eighty children had been found in one tenement. It no longer excites even passing attention, when the sanitary police report counting 101 adults and 91 children in a Crosby Street house, one of twins, built together. The children in the other, if I am not mistaken, numbered 89, a total of 180 for two tenements! Or when a midnight inspection in Mulberry Street unearths a hundred and fifty "lodgers" sleeping on filthy floors in two buildings. Spite of brown-stone trimmings, plate-glass and mosaic vestibule floors, the water does not rise in summer to the second story, while the beer flows unchecked to the all-night picnics on the roof. The saloon with the side-door and the landlord divide the prosperity of the place between them, and the tenant, in sullen submission, foots the bills.”

Chapter 2 Analysis Questions

1. Close Reading: According to chapter two, what is the definition of a “tenement”?
2. Close Reading: Describe the living conditions of the tenements, including at least 5 details/elements.
3. Close Reading: Using Chapter 2, draw a simple sketch of what you think a tenement building may have looked like. Label the following: how many floors the building has, how many families live on each floor, where the next tenement housing building is in relationship to it, and an appropriate number of windows.

Picture #2 Title : Yard in Jersey Street (now gone) Where Italians Live in the Worst Slums Image caption: It costs a dollar a month to sleep in these sheds

Analysis Questions:

1. Choose one object in this picture and list as many adjectives as you can to describe it.
2. Imagine yourself as one of the people in this picture. Imagine one thing you might see, one thing you might hear, and one thing you might smell.
3. Why do you think Jacob Riis included this image in How the Other Half Lives? What did he want people to be aware of? What was he concerned about?

Directions : Review the timeline and answer the questions that follow.

Analysis Questions:

1. Close Reading: What kinds of shifts in population did NYC experience between 1870 and 1880?

a. Analysis: What kinds of problems did this probably cause for NYC government officials and city services?

2. Close Reading: What was the immediate governmental response to the book Jacob Riis published?