johnfoyle wrote:'Tenement, back alley ' into Google image search leads me to the photo that is on the cover of the New Basement Tapes.
By Jacob August Riis (May 3, 1849 – May 26, 1914) , it's described as 'Those of Mullins alley (outside the tenements)' in his How the Other Half Lives book, 1890 & as 'A group of boys and a couple of girls congregate in Mullin's Alley, Cherry Hill, New Jersey. '
Another search seems to indicate that Cherry Hill , New Jersey is , of course, no longer a tenement. Maybe someone nearer there could enlighten us!
It's Mullen's Alley at 32 Cherry Street, New York City. This was a slum area (a desperate situation) at the time of the photo (not today). This article has the photo and mentions the work of Jacob August Riis.
http://selvedgeyard.com/2011/02/26/band ... ry-street/
Here is one on Cherry Hill (Lower East Side). Mentions Jacob August Riis and that the Gotham Court Slums were demolished in 1897.
"Cherry Hill is probably most unfortunately known for its most horrific slum -- Gotham Court, "one of the worst tenements along the East River." It would later be made infamous in Jacob Riis' renown 1890 blistering survey of "How The Other Half Lives." (An image from a version of this book is above.) According to Riis:
"It is curious to find that this notorious block, whose name was so long synonymous with all that was desperately bad, was originally built (in 1851) by a benevolent Quaker for the express purpose of rescuing the poor people from the dreadful rookeries they were then living in.
How long it continued a model tenement is not on record. It could not have been very long, for already in 1862, ten years after it was finished, a sanitary official counted 146 cases of sickness in the court, including “all kinds of infectious disease,” from small-pox down."
Gotham Court and the rest of Cherry Hill were not long for this world. In the wake of Riis expose, Gotham Court was demolished in 1897. By that time, efforts were made to construct more amenable tenements, including those built at 340, 342 and 344 Cherry Street in 1888."
http://theboweryboys.blogspot.com/2008/ ... -side.html
The Madonna of Cherry Hill
http://dreamersrise.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... -hill.html