| The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07. |
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| Riis, Jacob August |
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(r s) (KEY) , 1849–1914, Danish-American journalist and social reformer, b. Denmark. He emigrated to the United States in 1870. In 1877 he became a police reporter for the New York Tribune and later for the New York Evening Sun. His reports on slum dwellings and abuses of lower-class urban life culminated in his first book, How the Other Half Lives (1890), and earned him the friendship of Theodore Roosevelt. Riis founded a pioneer settlement house in New York (named for him in 1901). His association with the public park and playground movements was commemorated by the Jacob Riis Park on Long Island. | 1 | | See his autobiography, The Making of an American (1901; new ed. with epilogue by his grandson, J. R. Owre, 1970); biography by L. Ware (1938). | 2 |
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| | | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2007 Columbia University Press. |
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