Even as the nation’s aggregate wealth grew, so too did the number of people mired in poverty. In New York City, America’s largest and wealthiest city, two-thirds of its residents lived in cramped tenement apartments, many unfit for human habitation, while tens of thousands scrounged by in the streets. In 1890, muckraking social crusader Jacob A. Riis shone a light on the era’s grinding poverty with his shocking exposé, How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. It’s brimming with photos of people crammed cheek-to-jowl in dark, cluttered, airless quarters.