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Published Articles by Adrienne deNoyelles

Journal of Urban History, 2020

During the twentieth century, Jacob Riis's once-widely-acknowledged role as father of the urban s... more During the twentieth century, Jacob Riis's once-widely-acknowledged role as father of the urban small-parks movement receded in historical significance in favor of his contributions to journalism, photography, housing reform, and settlement work. This pattern overlooks the central importance that Riis himself placed on parks and playgrounds activism in his broader social agenda, at one point calling it "the logical sequel to 'How the Other Half Lives.'" This essay examines how Riis, through his efforts to provide New York's tenement districts with "breathing spaces," refashioned eminent domain from a rhetorical concept into a potent tool for reformers to assert control over working-class urban spaces. It also considers the impact of these projects on the working-class denizens of Riis's proposed park sites, who viewed their homes in a markedly different light.

American Jewish History, 2016

Conference Paper Abstracts by Adrienne deNoyelles

By the early 1900s, Americans’ perception of tuberculosis had undergone a dramatic shift from an ... more By the early 1900s, Americans’ perception of tuberculosis had undergone a dramatic shift from an age-old, private malady to a modern, public scourge linked with unchecked immigration, unregulated industrial and urban development, and related problems like poverty and alcoholism. In New York, where approximately 10,000 died of tuberculosis each year, public activists compressed all of these issues into a point in physical space: a working-class immigrant neighborhood notorious for its high tuberculosis mortality. Situated only a fifteen-minute walk from the City Hall and Stock Exchange, it bulged with up to four thousand people living inside dark, unventilated tenements. As public activists called for the demolition of the “Lung Block” in widely disseminated exhibits, articles, and speeches, this tiny, run-down spot of New York came to occupy the epicenter of public debates concerning disease etiology, citizenship, the excesses of capitalism, the merits of social reform, and the expanding role of science and government in people’s lives.
James B. Curry, a priest who served the block’s sizable Catholic population for more than thirty years, presents an important counterpoint to this debate in that he perceived reformers as a far greater threat to his neighborhood than either poverty or deadly bacteria. To him, the “Lung Block” was a slander invented by professional do-gooders who wanted to remake the city in their image, rather than confronting the poverty and municipal neglect that endangered the well-being of his parishioners. As the area’s self-designated spokesman, Curry harnessed the powers of his pulpit and the local press to defend his parishioners against the charges leveled by the health department’s disease maps and reformers’ photographs. Curry’s colorful and well-publicized counterattacks, and the range of responses they evoked from Jacob Riis and other social reformers, provide a fascinating glimpse into the ongoing class and ethnic tensions that accompanied Progressive social activism in early-twentieth-century New York.

Papers by Adrienne deNoyelles

Journal of Urban History

During the twentieth century, Jacob Riis’s once-widely-acknowledged role as father of the urban s... more During the twentieth century, Jacob Riis’s once-widely-acknowledged role as father of the urban small-parks movement receded in historical significance in favor of his contributions to journalism, photography, housing reform, and settlement work. This pattern overlooks the central importance that Riis himself placed on parks and playgrounds activism in his broader social agenda, at one point calling it “the logical sequel to ‘How the Other Half Lives.’” This essay examines how Riis, through his efforts to provide New York’s tenement districts with “breathing spaces,” refashioned eminent domain from a rhetorical concept into a potent tool for reformers to assert control over working-class urban spaces. It also considers the impact of these projects on the working-class denizens of Riis’s proposed park sites, who viewed their homes in a markedly different light.

American Jewish History, 2016

American Jewish History, 2016

American Jewish History, 2016

Journal of Urban History, 2020

During the twentieth century, Jacob Riis's once-widely-acknowledged role as father of the urban s... more During the twentieth century, Jacob Riis's once-widely-acknowledged role as father of the urban small-parks movement receded in historical significance in favor of his contributions to journalism, photography, housing reform, and settlement work. This pattern overlooks the central importance that Riis himself placed on parks and playgrounds activism in his broader social agenda, at one point calling it "the logical sequel to 'How the Other Half Lives.'" This essay examines how Riis, through his efforts to provide New York's tenement districts with "breathing spaces," refashioned eminent domain from a rhetorical concept into a potent tool for reformers to assert control over working-class urban spaces. It also considers the impact of these projects on the working-class denizens of Riis's proposed park sites, who viewed their homes in a markedly different light.

American Jewish History, 2016

By the early 1900s, Americans’ perception of tuberculosis had undergone a dramatic shift from an ... more By the early 1900s, Americans’ perception of tuberculosis had undergone a dramatic shift from an age-old, private malady to a modern, public scourge linked with unchecked immigration, unregulated industrial and urban development, and related problems like poverty and alcoholism. In New York, where approximately 10,000 died of tuberculosis each year, public activists compressed all of these issues into a point in physical space: a working-class immigrant neighborhood notorious for its high tuberculosis mortality. Situated only a fifteen-minute walk from the City Hall and Stock Exchange, it bulged with up to four thousand people living inside dark, unventilated tenements. As public activists called for the demolition of the “Lung Block” in widely disseminated exhibits, articles, and speeches, this tiny, run-down spot of New York came to occupy the epicenter of public debates concerning disease etiology, citizenship, the excesses of capitalism, the merits of social reform, and the expanding role of science and government in people’s lives.
James B. Curry, a priest who served the block’s sizable Catholic population for more than thirty years, presents an important counterpoint to this debate in that he perceived reformers as a far greater threat to his neighborhood than either poverty or deadly bacteria. To him, the “Lung Block” was a slander invented by professional do-gooders who wanted to remake the city in their image, rather than confronting the poverty and municipal neglect that endangered the well-being of his parishioners. As the area’s self-designated spokesman, Curry harnessed the powers of his pulpit and the local press to defend his parishioners against the charges leveled by the health department’s disease maps and reformers’ photographs. Curry’s colorful and well-publicized counterattacks, and the range of responses they evoked from Jacob Riis and other social reformers, provide a fascinating glimpse into the ongoing class and ethnic tensions that accompanied Progressive social activism in early-twentieth-century New York.

Journal of Urban History

During the twentieth century, Jacob Riis’s once-widely-acknowledged role as father of the urban s... more During the twentieth century, Jacob Riis’s once-widely-acknowledged role as father of the urban small-parks movement receded in historical significance in favor of his contributions to journalism, photography, housing reform, and settlement work. This pattern overlooks the central importance that Riis himself placed on parks and playgrounds activism in his broader social agenda, at one point calling it “the logical sequel to ‘How the Other Half Lives.’” This essay examines how Riis, through his efforts to provide New York’s tenement districts with “breathing spaces,” refashioned eminent domain from a rhetorical concept into a potent tool for reformers to assert control over working-class urban spaces. It also considers the impact of these projects on the working-class denizens of Riis’s proposed park sites, who viewed their homes in a markedly different light.

American Jewish History, 2016

American Jewish History, 2016

American Jewish History, 2016