
Jacob August RiisVerenigde Staten, 1849–1914Mag men het zien?
New York, Verenigde Staten
Het hoort bij de collectie, maar is momenteel niet tentoongesteld.
1870–1914 · Werkzaam in
New York City
1888–1899
Employed by: The Sun
1894
Son Roger Williams is born
Roger Williams Riis (1894–1953) is born; he too later becomes a reporter and activist.
1895
Meets Theodore Roosevelt
When Roosevelt is appointed president of the Board of Commissioners of the New York City Police Department, he asks Riis to show him night police work; on their first tour they find nine out of ten patrolmen missing. Riis writes about it in the next day's newspaper and the force is more attentive for the rest of Roosevelt's term; deeply affected by Riis's sense of justice, Roosevelt befriends him for life and later has the police lodging rooms where Riis had suffered in his first years in New York closed.
15 June 1897
Park opens on the site of Mulberry Bend
Mulberry Park, now Columbus Park, replaces the “foul core” of the Mulberry Bend slum — the outcome of Riis's photojournalism. He is not invited to the opening but goes anyway with Lincoln Steffens; in the final speech the street cleaning commissioner credits him with the park and the crowd gives him three cheers.