Fourth graders visited the Museum of the City of New York to see the exhibit “Jacob Riis: Revealing New York’s Other Half.”

Mr. Riis surprised fourth graders with a visit.

He presented a slideshow of his work documenting life on the Lower East Side. Gilded New Yorkers were surprised by what they saw.

Jacob’s Life

by:Zach
In 1849 Riis was born.
In 1870 Riis moved to america.
In 1873 Riis was a police reporter.
In 1907 Riis was happily married.
But in the end died sad and poor.

Jolly
Amazing
Clever
Optimistic
Brave

Activist
United with police
Genres
United with immigrants
Smart
Talented

Really nice
Immigrated
Is united with Theodore Roosevelt
Social

Capturing the Moment

By: Violet Z. Wexler
He sneaks around the neighborhoods,
surprising immigrants at any age.
Traveling across the country,
day and night.
Showing one side the other side,
showing wealthy the poor,
showing them immigrants in horrible living conditions.
“I scrubs,” “I work,” “I clean,” all things Jacob Riis wanted them to know.
Boys sleeping in the streets, dumps and alleys.
Jacob Riis felt the immigrants and how their lives were.
Although, Jacob took photos
in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s
his photos continue to live in our hearts.
The tenements were dirty, depressing and hot.
This is what Jacob wanted to show everyone.
Chugga, chugga, choo choo!
Can you hear that?
It is Jacob Riis traveling to his next destination.
He pleaded peace for those who were poor
and asked for kind donations.
Will Jacob Riis’ photos continue to live forever?

The Flashing Camera of Jacob Riis

By Verity Berthelsen
Jacob Riis was many people’s hero.
Helping people all around the world with his illustrative camera and his thinking mind at work trying to help everyone he could.
A picture called “Bandit’s Roost” shows how much trouble he goes through to help people.
Another picture called “I Scrubs,” also shows that he would take a little girl out from doing her house work just to help people.
I wonder what it felt like being woken up at three o’clock by the flash of a camera?
The flash of a camera must have felt blinded eyes behind it.
His birthdate was May 3, 1849.
Jacob not only helped people on the streets but also in the tenements because tenements could be as terrible as the tunnels of streets.

Riis Makes It Right

By Tess Taetle

It’s 1890 and Jacob Riis takes a picture: CLICK. The people are shocked by the big flash.

Jacob sees many impoverished and unhappy people and he wants to make things better. What should I do? thought Jacob. I know what to do, take pictures and write is what I will do.

He often visits the lower east side and takes pictures of people living in the tenement houses. “I can’t bare to see people like this,” he explains to the rich.

He sees exhausted boys sleeping in the street: CLICK he takes a picture. He calls it Street Arabs – Night Boys in Sleeping Quarters. He takes another picture: CLICK it is of children sleeping in night school. He calls the picture Night School in the Seventh Avenue Lodging House.

The air in the tenement houses is as thick as mud and smelled worse. You can almost feel the way the people live: sad and depressed.

The tenements were stifling in the hot summer and you can feel the heat when you look at the pictures. You feel as if you are sizzling.

You can hear the sewing machine going “chchchchch,” and the babies crying “wawawawawa.”

All of the tenements are crammed together like stacks of bricks and the photographs show so much misery. “I take pictures of rich and poor to show what the poor needs.”

How terrible are these tenements? They are absolutely shocking.

Jacob wants to help so badly. He races to help the immigrants by taking photographs day after day.

Showing the rest of the world the horrific homes of the immigrants helped heal the helpless and they were no longer hopeless.

The Cold and the Warm

by Sofia Ulrich
The poor are cold and homeless
drinking beer under bridges waiting for the sun to go down
people from Africa, Italy and Ireland should all have a chance to relax at home and play with their friends
Jacob Riis said “kids should be active and happy not sad and a mess,”
newsies being burgled by gangs it’s sad how it all ends
oh and the tenements are crowded filthy and sick it was dreadful to live in the conditions they’re in Jacob A Riis
wonders if these conditions will ever get better, and if kids will have
a better life growing up?
Riis has a temptation to make things terrific not terrifying
I hear the screaming children weeping like dogs crying to go home…
by New York City I hope next time I see you have healed
says lady liberty well the sun went down

What Did Jacob Riis Do?

Shoshi
Justice for all immigrants in the US was his hope
An author-he wrote twelve different books,
“Creak” goes the floor whenever it is touched, the camera goes off, “click”
Other-How The Other Half Lives
Boys, tired on the streets

Ready, to do anything for those poor immigrants
Immigrant from Denmark-1870
I wonder how many lives he changed
Small, crowded, and sad

Rubie’s Poem

I see suffering
I smell shame
I touch miserie
I taste death
I feel lost

I see children in the streets, suffering, hungry poor.
I smell the shame the rich should be feeling for not helping people live the way they live.
I touch the miserie of the children working to the bone to scratch out a living.
I taste the death of those who could not get the money to get help.
I feel lost in the the sadness and grief the Lower East side has brought me.

Help
Owner
Work

True
Heep
Exhausting

Others
Tie
Hire
Exciting
Rong

Hows
Allowed
Life
Fired

Long
Instructions
Volcano
Executing
Shirtwaist

Poor is Not More

By Ren
Jacob A. Riis,
He brought them all peace,
To the poor children of the Lower East,
Like poor little Katie,
With the old scrub-a-dub-dub,
Or the street gangs,
With a common wangs,
Tested on the screaming newsies,
The rotten smell of poop on the streets,
With poor people laying out sheets,
In 1890 Jacob A. Riis threw a fancy tea party,
He told the rich about three roomed tenements,
With a despicable life in the overworked factories,
Fancy and Famous some might be,
But what does that all really mean?

Myles Jacob Riis Poem

I see the photographs I helped Jacob Riis take.
We have to do something.
The sad immigrants
in an old smelly tenement
are surprised because
the flash went off.
In 1888 immigrants don’t have much.
Living in a dirty, disgusting dump
lonely and poor, a man just sits on a stool.
He’s thinking about a better life.
We hear a
Splash
Splash
Splash
from above.
The rain falls through the cracks making everything wet.
Poor
poor
poor
lonely man
We took his picture to show the wealthy.
See how they react.
Some people might say Riis has a rainbow above his head.
Can he save those who came for a better life?

Happy Hearted Jacob RIIs

Madiba
Before I start this poem I would Just like to say,
that I worked very hard and that people might say,
I am a great photographer and that might be true,
but the pictures I take might make you feel blue,
Like digging in a graveyard or getting drunk under a dock,
Scrunch Scrunch goes the dirt I have a key but not a lock,
I see that I can’t have a nonviolent talk,
It’s hard to live on the lower East Side the late 1800s,
But I’ve taken pictures by the dozens,
I am trying describe the tenement conditions,
and that landlord… He never listens,
Being a border it sure packs a punch,
Do I have money so I can have lunch?
I think I have spoken enough but let me at least Say my name is
jacob Riis
and one day I hope this city will release all hatred and accept peace. That is what I hope as Jacob a. Riis.

Not Gilded, Tuff

By. Kate Deming
Jacob A. Riis
A special man. A clever man.
Photographing Life, for people to see.
How can I put all his fame and discovery into a poem?
A simple handwritten poem.
He shared with world what he thought, what he wanted to change.
He wasn’t afraid to share and expand his ideas.
A significant, brave man.
Day and Night
He roamed the streets helping these immigrants.
He knows he could get chased down or hurt.
But he is saving lifes.
With his photos.
The pictures of these immigrants told stories
To the rich
To the poor
These pictures talked
For these immigrants
They didn’t have a voice in what they live in.
What they work, live, play in.
Imagine a young girl
School by day,
Scrubber by night
Cooking and Cleaning
To support her family
A six year old child.
1912 in a dusty alley,
little boys play, with sticks
and rocks.
They hide from the neighborhood gang
Running 10 blocks to get to their tenement in time for dinner
Which won’t fill up their stomachs all the way
The sky is no longer blue.
It’s gray and black
The hustle and bustle of the crowded streets
Jacob carrying his camera and looking at the gray colored sky.
He walks up the blocks and takes these pictures that are more than pictures.
You can still hear the shouting of the food vendors as they yell in 50 different languages “Get your Veggies, Fruit!” “ Obtenez votre Pretzels, boeuf et poulet rôti .
As Jacob walks up the blocks,
He sees young children just getting from work
Riis makes his way into old brick tenement that barely stands up thru the night.
The hallway is dark and stuffy.
The floor tile is yet cracked in every single spot.
Rust and Mold is building up in corners.
The stairs are hard and steep with creaking noises as Jacob walks.
creak, co, creak, thump, creakkk.
six, seven, eight, even nine, people in one tenement.
They struggle with work, food, and money.
After a long day the family sits down to eat.
Will there be enough food for the border?
As he walks out, he thinks to himself.
Why?
Why does nobody take action.
Why does no one bother.
Well,
Jacob walks away into shadows in the the stuffy, less crowded version of the Lower East Side. He wonders, he thinks.
What are you going to do about it?

Thoughtful Jacob Riis

By Jett

It is beautiful, peaceful, nice, and relaxing.
It is photography

Jacob August Riis took lots of photographs and invented flash photography.

He took photos of sad immigrants, he took photos of poor dirty lifeless immigrants from 1887.

When he took photos he took them in tenements that were dirty, cold, small and disgusting. They had lots of people yelling different things, like “I need money.”

I wonder what Jacob Riis thought about America? Did he think it was an interesting place to take photos or not? I wonder.

Teddy Roosevelt called Jacob Jake which meant they were very close. As close as a caterpillars crslist.
Jacob Riis sadly died may 26 1914

The Flashy Tenements

By: Grace Anne MacGillivray

Jacob August Riis is a man that lived in the 1800’s-1900’s. He took pictures of what tenements were like and what the job conditions were.
Jacob August Riis
From DenmArk
Children working hard
The camera clicks and the phOto happens
Born in 1849

Artistic
Un-wealthy (not so rich)
In the shops he sees the hard workinG children
Utterly urban
Lower East Side
Tenements were disgusting

WRites books
Is Jacob Riis going to change anything? Takes pictures of Immigrants
Sad pictures of children living in the streets

Picture Perfect

By Ella LY

Jacob a journalist of heart
A helper
A healer
A changer
Someone that cared
I hear
KAHBAM
The noise of the flash as he takes the picture
A picture of the poor
And then a picture of the rich
Immigrants shuffling their shoes startled
Immigrants from all over the world
Immigrants like Jacob
One picture would tell a story
while the words would tell the meaning

1888
Bandits Roost
Tenement squalor
A picture that is hard to look at
A man who didn’t call himself a photographer took many pictures like this one
Look at the hardened faces
Each one tells what these people have been through
Once they had hope
Now they have doubt
They wander wondering the unimaginable

Ever wonder what it was like to live in the past?
Well now you know
This man took these pictures to tell these people’s story
He travelled the world for all those who would listen
That was Jacob Riis
That will always be Jacob Riis
And this was “how the other half lives.”

How The Other Portion Lives

Elijah

When I stroll through the city
on a calm walk,
I cannot help but notice
the immigrants.
Children, Women,
Men, Cousins,
Brothers, Sisters.

I stand for a while…
looking, staring, at their broken
hearts, broken faces, and broken
dreams,

Their living conditions
are filthy, appalling,
horrifying, and most
of all utterly disastrous.

Bang! Bang! Bang!
I swivel and look…
I wake from
my nightmare.
When will it
end?

the people’s voice

Dennis
There once was a man named jacob a riis. he was a kind man who noticed that all people were not living in the same condition.

Cough cough! you heard immigrants and the other half everywhere getting sick and passing on.

Even little Kids would have to scrub clothing with no time to play and no time to have fun.

Will anything ever Change?

PEOPLE WOULD BE COOPED UP IN TINY DISEASE FILLED areas.

Until Jacob a riis came along.

He showed photos of the poor to the rich.

making nyc a much better place.

A Life Of Labor

By Cassidy Moskowitz

Jacob Riis was an activist in the late 1800s and the early 1900s
helping the poor
fighting for children like 7 year old Katie
who didn’t have time to be a kid
instead had to stay home and scrub her filthy tenement all day
listening to the banging of the gangs beating up the newsies
Jacob was determined to put an end to all of this
I wonder if Jacob is the reason kids can have fun, and have freedom now a days!

Jacob The Hero

Beckett

Jammed in the tenement is how people lived
A man in the 1800’s and 1900’s
Click click went the camera
Only a little bit of room to move
Beat up and sleeping on the street
A mazing man
Rigorous jobs for the poor kids
In and out of houses all the time
I wonder if he liked to take pictures or he did it for the poor
Sharing one room for six people

One Of The Most Important People Of New York City

Alfredo
There was a man named Jacob August Riis,
He was a great man
he took pictures of immigrants to help them.
One of his photos was of a girl named Katie,
she had to go to school and after,
she had to take care of her family,
Katie was six years old.
Jacob was born in 1849 in Denmark,
Jacob took most of his pictures in the early 1900’s.
A lot of his pictures were of immigrants in tenements.
One of his photo’s was of a family that had to wake up
at three in the morning so they could go to work,
he took a picture of them before they got up and payed them
50 cents for it. He did this for the tenants because he wanted them
to get out of those old stinky tenement buildings.
Click went his camera, every time he took a picture.
Jacob was brave because he was taking pictures of people
and photography was dangerous back then because of the flash powder,
you could set yourself on fire, or blow your hand off!
He was also kind because he was helping immigrants!
I wonder how old Jacob was when he died?
Jacob was an amazingly awesome hero hero who saved many people’s lives.