Three young street children huddle together over a grate for warmth in an alleyway off Mulberry Street, Manhattan

A young girl, holding a baby, sits in a doorway next to a garbage can.

In an astonishingly atmospheric image taken in 1887, a group of men loiter in an alley known as 'Bandit's Roost' off Mulberry Street

The sight of Italian immigrant families in New York on Jersey Street, living in shacks could be a scene from the developing world today

A dilapidated wooden shack sits in an empty lot surrounded by tenement buildings in 1896.

View of a back-lot house on Bleecker Street between Mercer and Greene Streets, almost toppling into an excavation site

An Italian immigrant smokes a pipe in his makeshift home under the Rivington Street Dump

A man sorts through trash under the 47th Street dump where he has made his home in around 1890

In a picture taken in 1890 a Bohemian family of four roll cigars at home in their tenement. Working from six in the morning till nine at night, they earn 3.75 for a thousand cigars, and between them could turn out three thousand cigars a week

Mrs Benoit, a Native American widow, sews and beads while smoking a pipe in her Hudson Street apartment, New York City.

A dishevelled shoeshine boy named Tommy takes a break from business

A Native American, Mountain Eagle, and his family make handicrafts while one son plays violin in their tenement at 6 Beach Street in this image taken in 1895

A group of prisoners in striped suits and hats at The Lock-step Penitentiary on Blackwell's Island around 1890

A shrine in 'Bandits Roost', between Mulberry Street and Mulberry Bend, Little Italy, during the feast of Saint Rocco on the 23rd May, 1895.

A real mulberry tree behind an early building, presumably the original dwelling in the area of Mulberry Bend

One girl laughs with delight at having her photo taken as street children get the chance to read at a library at 48 Henry Street, New York City in 1900

Children play with barrels under the washing hung between tenements in Gotham Court, Cherry Street around 1890

Teachers show primary school children how to plant seeds in a plot of land in New York. This picture was taken in about 1900

A group portrait of a football team posing in front of a fence at the West Side Playground, 68th Street, in 1895

A grocery shop and post office on Mulberry Street in Little Italy, around 1890

Warmly wrapped up children play in front of Dewitt Church, 280 Rivington Street, in 1890

Three girls jump rope while a group of children and adults form a semicircle around them on the rooftop playground of the Hebrew Institute

Children swim under the supervision of adults at Public Bath 10, at the Hudson River

Schoolboys play with a ball on the rooftop playground

Children of Mott Street Industrial School, New York, salute the Stars and Stripes, and repeat the Oath of Allegiance

Children holding American flags while riding tricycles and wagons on the rooftop garden of Ellis Island were the offspring of detained or waiting immigrants