How the other half lived

On this day in 1870, Jacob Riis stepped off a ship from Denmark to begin a new life in New York. The immigration office found him a job in western Pennsylvania, but news of a war in Europe prompted him to soon return to New York City to volunteer to serve in the...

Looking for Hell

The other day I went looking for Hell. I was in New York and had a few hours to kill so I checked the map for things near my hotel and I saw we were near the neighborhood labeled “Hell’s Kitchen.”  I’d been reading about the 19th Century tenements of the Five Points...