Ida b wells works

Primary Sources

(1) Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890)

What is a tenement? The law defines it as a house "occupied by three or four more families, living independently and doing their cooking on the premises; or by more than two families on a floor, so living and cooking and having a common right in the halls, stairways, yards, etc."

The tenement is generally a brick building from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor which, used for the sale of liquor, has a side opening for the benefit of the inmates and to evade the Sunday law; four families occupy each floor, and a set of rooms consists of one or two dark closets, used as bedrooms, with a living room twelve feet by ten.

The staircase is too often a dark well in the centre of the house, and no direct through ventilation is possible, each family being separated from the other by partition.

(2) Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890)