Tenement House, New York City, from the Habitations of Man series (N113) issued by W. Duke, Sons & Co. to promote Honest Long Cut Smoking and Chewing Tobacco 1890

This chromolithograph of a ‘Tenement House, N.Y. City’ was made by The Giles Company as one of a series of promotional cards for W. Duke, Sons & Co. tobacco. The image speaks to conditions of poverty and overcrowding in late 19th-century New York. Jacob Riis’s photographs of similar scenes shocked middle-class viewers, while also shaping urban reform movements. The tenements became both a problem to be solved and a symbol of immigrant life. The very existence of this print as an advertisement suggests the reach of the tobacco company into working-class communities and the ways in which capitalism sought to profit from the poor. Social historians examine census records, photographs, newspapers, and other primary documents, along with institutional histories, to explore the socio-economic contexts of art. These sources offer a deeper understanding of the relationship between art, commerce, and social reform.