The full text and images of Jacob Riis’s 1890 classic How The Other Half Lives is online (previously), featuring striking photos of the dire state of NYC poverty during the “gilded age,” when wealth disparity hit levels that are eerily reminiscent of the modern age. Reading this is probably good prep for our coming future (above, “Police Station lodgers in Elizabeth Street Station”).
How The Other Half Lives, by Jacob Riis
(via IO9)