The Age of the City - pnhs.psd202.org

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THE AGE OF THE CITY

THE AGE OF IMMIGRATION

THE MYTH OF THE “MELTING POT”

ELLIS ISLAND, NEW YORK HARBOR

“NEW” IMMIGRANTS

Southern & Eastern

Europeans

Chinese & Japanese

ANGEL ISLAND WAS CONSIDERED MORE HARSH THAN ELLIS ISLAND

IMMIGRATION DATA ANALYSIS

AMERICA IN 1900

POPULATION GROWTH 1860-1900

TOTAL POPULATION GROWTH 1860-1920

THE ETHNIC CITY

SOURCES OF IMMIGRATION FROM EUROPE

ETHNIC & CLASS SEGREGATION 1850-1890

Milwaukee, WI

JACOB RIIS

Danish immigrant & New York newspaper

reporter and photographer Jacob Riis shocked

many Americans with his sensational (and

sometimes sensationalized) descriptions and

pictures of tenement life in his 1890 book How

the Other Half Lives.

JACOB RIIS

PHOTOGRAPHER JACOB RIIS CAPTURED

IMAGES OF THE CITY

Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis

JACOB RIIS HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVESWhen once I asked the agent of a notorious Fourth Ward alley how many people might be

living in it I was told: one hundred and forty families, one hundred Irish, thirty-eight Italian, and

two that spoke the German tongue. Barring the agent herself, there was not a native-born

individual in the court. The answer was characteristic of the cosmopolitan character of lower New

York, very nearly so for the whole of it, wherever it runs to alleys and courts. One may find for the

asking an Italian, a German, a French, African, Spanish, Bohemian, Russian, Scandinavian,

Jewish, and Chinese colony. Even the Arab, who peddles "holy earth" from the Battery as a direct

importation from Jerusalem, has his exclusive preserves at the lower end of Washington Street.

The one thing you shall vainly ask for in the chief city of America is a distinctively American

community. There is none; certainly not among the tenements. . . .

The once unwelcome Irishman has been followed in his turn by the Italian, the Russian Jew,

and the Chinaman, and has himself taken a hand of opposition, quite as bitter and quite as

ineffectual, against these later hordes. Wherever these have gone they have crowded him out,

possessing the block, the street, the ward with their denser swarms. . . .

A map of the city, colored to designate nationalities, would show more stripes than the skin of

a zebra, and more colors than any rainbow.

Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1890). Reprint, "The

Mixed Crowd," in F. Cordasco, ed., Jacob Riis Revisited (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books,

Doubleday & Co., 1968). pp. 18-19.

MULBERRY STREET, NEW YORK CITY

PROBLEMS IN THE CITY

IMMIGRATION UNDER ATTACK

IMMIGRATION UNDER ATTACK

PUBLIC DISCRIMINATION

To further humiliate immigrants arriving in

America, many political cartoons, postcards

and ethnic trading cards were made

exaggerating ethnic stereotypes.

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