Curated OER
Life in a Big Urban City in the Gilded Age
While this presentation is not heavy in text it more than makes up for it with the telling images of life in New York at the turn of the century. Use as a supplemental lecture tool when covering immigration, tenements, Shirtwaist...
Curated OER
Highlights of Modern American Family Art and Literature
Students develop imagery in literary and art works. They discuss Jacob Lawrence's painting, the "Tombstones, 1942", which conveyed overcrowded tenements and families living in Harlem (New York, New York). They design picture stories...
Curated OER
History Telling
Tenth graders examine the different parts of history that make up people's lives. In this American History lesson, 10th graders explore how historians learn about events that happened in the past by looking at events that happened in...
Curated OER
Lesson on Superlatives
Students practice basic Internet navigation skills, find and summarize information on a Web site, and explore tenement life in the 19th and early 20th Century.
Scholastic
Scholastic: Jane Addams of Hull House
Biography of Jane Addams from childhood to death. Includes information on Hull house, the juvenile courts and her campaign against sweatshops.
Other
On the Lower East Side: Observations of Life in Lower Manhattan
Links to contemporary essays about life on the Lower East Side of New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These essays cover a range of topics and are well worth exploring to find out what problems writers were exposing...
OpenStax
Open Stax: Urbanization 1870 1900: Great Migration and New European Immigration
What caused the influx of African Americans and European immigrants into urban centers in the late 19th century? Learn about some of the discriminatory and anti-immigrant laws that were enacted to restrict their rights. Includes a chart...
PBS
Wnet: Thirteen: New York: Tenement Museum
Site offers information and photos about tenements on New York's Lower East Side in the late 1800's. Be sure to click on the photos for information.
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.
Smithsonian Institution
National Portrait Gallery: American Women: Jane Addams
See a portrait of activist Jane Addams painted by American painter, George deForest Brush, and read a brief discussion of Addams' important role as a reformer.
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.
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Gilder Lehrman Institute: History Now: Immigration in the Gilded Age:using Photographs as Primary Sources
[Free Registration/Login Required] This resource presents a lesson plan about immigration that uses photographs as primary sources.
Read Works
Read Works: Immigration Immigrant Housing: Lower East Side Manhattan Tenements
[Free Registration/Login Required] An informational text about the lives of immigrants living in the tenements of Lower East Side Manhattan. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading comprehension.
Read Works
Read Works: The Twilight of the Italian Social Club
[Free Registration/Login Required] An informational text about the rise and fall of neighborhood social clubs. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading comprehension.
PBS
Wnet: Thirteen: Freedom: A History of Us: Whose Land Is This? [Pdf]
A lesson plan, with printable activity sheets, from the producers of the 16-episode PBS series "Freedom: A History of US." Designed to help learners examine the anti-immigrant sentiment that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and...
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...
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.