Riis, Jacob A

Riis, Jacob A(ugust)

(born May 3, 1849, Ribe, Den.—died May 26, 1914, Barre, Mass., U.S.) U.S. journalist and social reformer. He immigrated to the U.S. at 21 and became a police reporter for the New York Tribune (1877–88) and the New York Evening Sun (1888–99). He publicized the deplorable living conditions in the slums of New York's Lower East Side, photographing the rooms and hallways of tenements. He compiled his findings in How the Other Half Lives (1890), a book that stirred the nation's conscience and spurred the state's first significant legislation to improve tenements.