by Kate Dolan | Jun 5, 2011 | Latest Posts, Living History, The Irish
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...
by Kate Dolan | Mar 31, 2011 | Latest Posts, Living History, The Irish
When Irish landlords started shipping their starving tenants to North America in the mid-19th Century (either to help the tenants or to help themselves by avoiding the extra poor tax), most of the immigrants chose to go to New York. It soon became much cheaper to send...
by Kate Dolan | Jan 11, 2011 | Latest Posts, Living History
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...
