Tenements
What were tenements?
Tenements were "urban slums". Buildings in more run down sections of the city were first purchased by real estate investors. They were then sold to numerous families for extremely low prices. They quickly filled up, therefore resulting in terrible living conditions. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis were common. The people living in these could not afford much better, as they commonly worked over 60 hours a week, but for only 10 cents an hour. The lower class was quickly becoming tuned out, and the upper class was not around to help.
Photos
Tenements were "urban slums". Buildings in more run down sections of the city were first purchased by real estate investors. They were then sold to numerous families for extremely low prices. They quickly filled up, therefore resulting in terrible living conditions. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis were common. The people living in these could not afford much better, as they commonly worked over 60 hours a week, but for only 10 cents an hour. The lower class was quickly becoming tuned out, and the upper class was not around to help.
Photos
How the Other Half Lives - Jacob Riis
"...a one room 12x12 with five families living in it, comprising twenty person of both sexes and all ages, with only two beds, without partition, screen, chair, or table."
"...large rooms were partitioned into several smaller ones, without regard to light, or ventilation, the rate of rent being power in proportion to space or height from the street, and they soon became filled from cellar to garret with a class of tenantry living from hand to mouth, loose in morals, improvident in habits, degraded, and squalid as beggary itself."
Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives described the tenements of New York to the world. Never before had someone captured more through photography and writing about tenements than Riis. More and more people could now see that the lower class needed help. His pictures captured the horrors that the lower class had to endure daily, which many had no idea of prior to reading the book,
Connection
Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives can relate to a book published a few decades later by Upton Sinclair, The jungle. Sinclair's book uncovered the secrets behind the lower class's workplace, specifically in the meat-packing industry. It revealed how unsafe some of their operations were, and how unsanitary their workplace was, resulting usually in a tampered product. Both authors also used photography to their fullest advantage. Riis showed the effects of not paying attention to the lower class, while Sinclair went around factories showcasing the effects of not paying people a livable wage.
"...a one room 12x12 with five families living in it, comprising twenty person of both sexes and all ages, with only two beds, without partition, screen, chair, or table."
"...large rooms were partitioned into several smaller ones, without regard to light, or ventilation, the rate of rent being power in proportion to space or height from the street, and they soon became filled from cellar to garret with a class of tenantry living from hand to mouth, loose in morals, improvident in habits, degraded, and squalid as beggary itself."
Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives described the tenements of New York to the world. Never before had someone captured more through photography and writing about tenements than Riis. More and more people could now see that the lower class needed help. His pictures captured the horrors that the lower class had to endure daily, which many had no idea of prior to reading the book,
Connection
Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives can relate to a book published a few decades later by Upton Sinclair, The jungle. Sinclair's book uncovered the secrets behind the lower class's workplace, specifically in the meat-packing industry. It revealed how unsafe some of their operations were, and how unsanitary their workplace was, resulting usually in a tampered product. Both authors also used photography to their fullest advantage. Riis showed the effects of not paying attention to the lower class, while Sinclair went around factories showcasing the effects of not paying people a livable wage.