Before Hoovervilles were popping up around town in the 1930s, there were plenty of down and out New Yorkers living in makeshift shanty homes. Photographer Jacob Riis documented the structures, and the people living in them, for his book How the Other Half Lives, which introduced the middle and upper class to the squalor for the first time, according to LIFE. In his book Rediscovering Jacob Riis, author Daniel Czitrom wrote: more ›

We stumbled upon a huge collection of these photos for LIFE magazine, all captioned with things like: "Six girls for cover," or "6 Girls In Apt," or "6 Girls In 2 Room Apt"—you get the idea. Basically what we have here is six young women living in a two room apartment in Greenwich Village; most of the photos were taken in January and February of 1954. But what is this? While there are plenty of photographs documenting their adventure (presumably for a LIFE spread), there are also television cameras in a couple of shots... though it doesn't appear anyone had the foresight to turn this into a reality show (it would have been the first!). more ›