How the Other Half Lives

Jacob A. Riis begins with a house bearing “the mark of Cain”: a former home of Manhattan’s old aristocracy, remade to cram the poor into dark, airless rooms. How did a city’s gardens and gracious houses become courts, alleys, and overcrowded barracks?

Writing in the late nineteenth century, Riis traces the tenement’s rise as New York swelled with trade and immigration. Behind the city’s bustle, families crowded into cellars and tiny rooms, paying dearly for shelter where light and fresh air were scarce—and where illness and death followed. Owners blamed the tenants; Riis points to a system that made neglect profitable. His account asks readers to look closely at the living conditions the comfortable could ignore, and at the human cost of calling a place home. What will the city—and those who prosper from its misery—do when the evidence can no longer be unseen?

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