City - NY - A place we call home 1912 Tile

Colourized photo from 1912, March Original title: Row of tenements from 260 to 268 Elizabeth St Photographer: Lewis Wickes Hine Location: 260 Elizabeth St, Little Italy, NY In the 1900's, millions of New Yorkers lived in tenement apartments. They were often single family buildings, that were cheaply converted to tiny multi-family units so they could stuff as many people as possible inside of them. Life was rough, health was poor and it was hard to make ends meet. Families had to work together and either make things to sell, or make things other stores could sell. They were paid by the piece so everyone had to work, the sick, kids etc. Some would make necklaces, others might make clothes, as shown in this picture, as they finish them up. Lewis Hines, a photographer that was assigned to photograph tenement buildings, and document them. He wanted to show how kids had to do all sorts of labour with little pay and no regards to safety. If it wasn't for him and this project, we may have never have known about buildings like these. More so they created child labour laws to prevent kids from having to work so young or getting hurt.