JACOB RIIS PARK

ALMOST unnoticeable, a bust of social reformer Jacob Riis can be found at the pavilion on the boardwalk in his namesake park on the Rockaway peninsula near the Marine Parkway Bridge.

Jacob August Riis (May 3, 1849 – May 26, 1914) was known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He endorsed the implementation of “model tenements” in New York with the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. Additionally, as one of the most famous proponents of the newly practicable casual photography, he is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his very early adoption of flash in photography. While living in New York, Riis experienced poverty and became a police reporter writing about the quality of life in the slums. He attempted to alleviate the bad living conditions of poor people by exposing their living conditions to the middle and upper classes. [wikipedia]

In his autobiography Riis wrote of finding Richmond Hill: “It was in the winter when all our children had the scarlet fever that one Sunday, when I was taking a long walk out on Long Island where I could do no one any harm, I came upon Richmond Hill, and thought it was the most beautiful spot I had ever seen, I went home and told my wife that I had found the place where we were going to live.…I picked out the lots I wanted. So before the next winter’s snow, we were snug in the house, with a ridge of wooded hills, between New York and us. The very lights of the city were shut out. So was the slum and I could sleep.” Riis’s house was placed on the National Register for Historic Places, but such a designation does not protect a property. The home was torn down in the mid-1970’s and replaced with a row of attached brick houses. Today two remaining beech trees planted by Riis in the backyard remind us of the tranquil neighborhood that put his mind at ease.

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