How the other half lives : studies among the tenements of New York /

How the other half lives : studies among the tenements of New York /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August), 1849-1914.
Imprint:	New York : Dover, c1971.
Description:	xiii, 233 p. : ill. ; 20 x 26 cm.
Language:	English
Subject:	Tenement houses -- New York (State) -- New York. Poor -- New York (State) -- New York. Poor Tenement houses New York (State) -- New York
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/187010

Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:	Museum of the City of New York.
ISBN:	0486220125 9780486220123
Notes:	"An unabridged republication of the text of the 1901 edition ... A new preface has been written specially for the present edition." Also issued online.
Summary:	This classic account of slum conditions in New York City was first published in 1890. Annotation. Famous journalistic record, exposing poverty & degradation of New York slums around 1900, by major social reformer. Famous journalistic record, exposing poverty and degradation of New York slums around 1900, by major social reformer. 100 striking and influential photographs. In How The Other Half Lives New Yorkers read with horror that three-quarters of the residents of their city were housed in tenements and that in those tenements rents were substantially higher than in better sections of the city. In his book Riis gave a full and detailed picture of what life in those slums was like, how the slums were created, how and why they remained as they were, who was forced to live there, and offered suggestions for easing the lot of the poor.
Other form:	Online version: Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August), 1849-1914. How the other half lives. New York, Dover [1971]

Description
Summary:	Jacob Riis was one of the very few men who photographed the slums of New York at the turn of the twentieth century, when as many as 300,000 people per square mile were crowded into the tenements of New York's Lower East Side. The filth and degradation made the area a hell for the immigrants forced to live there. Riis was one of those immigrants, and, after years of abject poverty, when he became a police reporter for the New York Tribune, he exposed the shameful conditions of life with which he was all too familiar. Today, he is best remembered as a compassionate and effective reformer and as a pioneer photo-journalist.<br> In How the Other Half Lives, New Yorkers read with horror that three-quarters of the residents of their city were housed in tenements and that in those tenements rents were substantially higher than in better sections of the city. In his book Riis gave a full and detailed picture of what life in those slums was like, how the slums were created, how and why they remained as they were, who was forced to live there, and offered suggestions for easing the lot of the poor. Riis originally documented all his studies with photographs. However, since the half-tone technique of photo reproduction had not been perfected, the original edition included mainly reductions in sketch-form of Riis' photographs. These could not begin to capture what Riis' sensitive camera caught on film. The anguish and the apathy, the toughness and the humiliation of the anonymous faces is all but obliterated in the sketches. This Dover edition includes fully 100 photographs, many famous, and many less familiar, from the Riis collection of the City Museum, and their inclusion here creates a closer conformity to Riis' intentions than did the original edition.
Item Description:	"An unabridged republication of the text of the 1901 edition ... A new preface has been written specially for the present edition."
Physical Description:	xiii, 233 p. : ill. ; 20 x 26 cm.
ISBN:	0486220125 9780486220123