This illustration from the Community Service Society's Annual Report for 1884 suggests the primitive facilities for water supply available at that time to tenement house dwellers. It was reproduced in Riis' "The Battle With the Slums" under the title…
This drawing depicts the basement tenements that once were among the worst sources of contagion and disease in New York. Riis' "The Battle With Slums" (1902) was one of the publications during the Progressive Era that reproduced this drawing.
Mulberry Bend Park was one of Riis' greatest achievements as a social reformer. Mulberry Bend was originally a poor Italian neighborhood. After the passage of the Small Parks Act in 1887, plans for the demolition of Mulberry Bend were filed a year…
During the Progressive Era, this particular photograph of the Model of the Block of the Lower East Side was often reused in publications and reports pertaining to tenement housing. The block was bounded by Chrystie, Forsyth, Canal and Bayard streets.…
This photograph of a Jewish man preparing for the Sabbath Eve in his coal cellar with two loaves of bread on the table was originally found on page 27 of Jacob Riis' 1892 book "The Children of the Poor".
This drawing by W.H. Drake was originally used in the Forty-First Annual Report of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, for the year 1884 as a illustration of slums located in Jersey Street. Years later, in 1902, Riis…