Jacob August Riis (1849-1914)
Jacob (lste name is pronouced Reese" as in "Reese's Pieces" was born in Ribe, Denmark May 3rd, 1849. He was but one of fifteen children and trained to be a carpenter in his native Denmark. In 1870, Jacob proposed to Elisabeth Nielsen, his only true love. She said no and the dejected Riis sailed off to New York and settled in the Lower East Side of Manhattan also known as "The Bowery". At that time, the neighborhoods were crammed beyond capacity. Some moving here to chase the "American Dream" but losing it all. Italians, Germans, Chinese, Czech, and others were crammed in tenement housing. Shacks no more that boards leaned up, some didn't even have that. Yet they were still charged for a place on the floor to sleep. No promise of food. No closets or drawer but most had nothing to put in them anyway. Riis became one of these unfortunates. Living on the street, sleeping where he could and working at whatever task he was fortunate enough to find.

"The Bowery is one of the great highways of humanity, a highway of seething life, of varied interest, of fun, of work, of sordid and terrible tragedy; and it is haunted by demons as evil as any that stalk through the pages of the 'Inferno.' ”

Although Riis had fourteen brothers and sisters, he was one of four to live past twenty years old. His other siblings died from tuberculosis, one was still born and the others died from disease and accidents. Riis' village had it's own population problems, unclean water, (contributing the the disease of his family) and squalid conditions. Jacob Riis found himself a young man growing up in a city with nothing and in such conditions. Rubbing shoulders with those who would kill you with no remorse in “Robbers’ Roost” on the notorious Mulberry Street.
Riis eventually landed a job in a neighborhood newspaper in 1873 then becoming a police reporter. Riis continued moving forward and by 1876 he returned to his Dutch home and once again proposed to Elisabeth. This time she said yes, and they returned to New York. By 1877 Riis worked for the New York Tribune. Riis found his calling in life in calling attention to the deplorable conditions people were forced to live in. He once remarked "My writing did not make much of an impression, these things rarely do, put in mere words,but my negatives, still dripping from the dark-room, came to reinforce them."
The most attention came from Riis' photographs. Words are simply words, but many of the pictures he published were permanently settled in the minds of many. In 1895 future president Theodore Roosevelt was the New York police commissioner and Riis was a police reporter for the Mulberry Street station. The two became lifelong friends and Riis gained Roosevelt's greatest admiration and respect with Roosevelt once called Riis, "the best American I ever knew."
In 1890 Riis published "How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York" showing all the squalid conditions. Now a U.S. President, Roosevelt called to his friend, Riis, personally saying “I have read your book, and I have come to help.” And help he did.
By 1900, thanks to the publishing's of Riis, the public outcry was so great, buildings were razed, streets transformed, parks were put in place of tenement housing and waste water finally cleaned.
Jacob August Riis, perhaps inspired by the death of his siblings and those in his neighborhood, perhaps tired of seeing first-hand the plight of so many from Denmark to New York, perhaps just because it was the right thing to do, Jacob stood up and said "Enough!" and he enacted a change that saved countless lives and continues to inspire.

To learn more about Jacob Riis, visit Jacob A. Riis Museum
To learn more about President Roosevelt and Jacobs friendship, visit Theodore Roosevelt Center where you can also view actual correspondence and other documents.

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