Other
Bringing History Home: The Progressive Era
In this 4th grade unit, students study how citizens and government of the early 20th century sought solutions to problems that accompanied immigration and industrialization. By focusing on child labor, factory working conditions and...
Stanford University
Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: Jacob Riis
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students solve a problem surrounding a historical question by reading primary source documents. This historical inquiry instructional activity allows students to investigate the photographs of...
Other
Sachem Central School District: Your History Site: The Muckrakers [Pdf]
Excerpts from the writings of Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, and Jacob Riis on early industrial America. Topics include the horrors that went into the making of sausages, the problem of transportation and the Standard Oil Company, and life...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: People: Assimilation and the Crucible of the City: How Other Half Lives
Photographs and an excerpt from Jacob Riis's famous tour of the distressing conditions of the tenements in New York City. Includes questions for discussion.
Other
Place in History: The Bowery Hall of Fame
Stroll through the Bowery in New York City and see what the tenements looked like in the late 19th century. This mini museum shows the life of the Bowery. Information about tenement areas in other cities is included.
Independence Hall Association
U.s. History: The Underside of Urban Life
Read about the plight of the urban poor in the rapidly growing cities. In addition to the modern skyscrapers, the cities also had tenement housing where the poor lived. Find a description of that housing and the problems this housing bred.
Other
Tenement Museum: New York Tenement Museum
From the online home of the museum, take a virtual tour of the restored apartments in a tenement building located at 97 Orchard Street in New York's Lower East Side. Learn about the lives of actual past residents and experience what life...
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Ap Us History: 1865 1898: Gilded Age: America Moves to the City
Discusses the urbanization that took place at the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Includes questions for students at end.
Chicago History Museum
Encyclopedia of Chicago: Tenements
An encyclopedia entry about tenements that focuses on the housing situation of poor immigrants in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Chicago. Includes information about early efforts to improve public housing in the city.
Other
Tenant Net: How the Other Half Lives
Find a hypertext reproduction of the full text (with illustrations) of the original 1890 edition of Jacob Riis's classic work on the living conditions of New York's poor immigrants, "How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements...
Curated OER
Encyclopedia of Chicago: Tenements
An encyclopedia entry about tenements that focuses on the housing situation of poor immigrants in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Chicago. Includes information about early efforts to improve public housing in the city.