Actor Jack Black attends the New York premiere of “Kung Fu Panda 2” at Ziegfeld Theatre on May 24, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)

United States Marines perform a fighting demonstration in Times Square as part of Fleet Week festivities May 27, 2011 in New York City. Fleet Week, which has been held in New York since 1984, brings thousands of military members to the city where they engage the public with numerous activities, demonstrations, tours and contests. Fleet Week concludes on Memorial Day with a military flyover to honor those killed while serving in the military. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

A visitor walks past the life-size sculpture “Security Guard” by Marc Sijan at The Armory Show, New York's annual international art fair, at Piers 92 and 94 on March 9, 2012 in New York City. The show features paintings, photographs, sculpture and other works of art by artists including Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman and Pablo Picasso. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A model presents a creation from The Blonds Autumn/Winter 2019 collection during New York Fashion Week in New York, U.S. February 12, 2019. (Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

Comic Con fans in costume arrive for the 1st day of the 2018 New York Comic-Con at the Jacob Javits Center on October 4, 2018. The four-day event which runs October 4-7 is the largest pop culture event on the East Coast. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP Photo)

New York City policemen tangled with demonstrators at a subway station on the opening day of the New York World's Fair, April 22, 1964. Youths attempted to stall the train, which was headed from the city to the fairgrounds, as a form of protest on behalf of civil rights for blacks. (Photo by Charles Gorry/AP Photo)

Nina Leen, one of the first female photographers to work for Life, took pictures for the magazine from 1940 to 1972. In the mid-1940s, her essay, “City Dogs”, featured actors and artists with their pets on the streets of New York City. In late-March, Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York City, is opening a solo exhibition of Leen’s work that features images from that essay and others. Here: author Fannie Hurst clad in mink coat, enjoying the jumping antics of her Yorkshire terrier Orphan Annie on the street. (Photo by Nina Leen/Pix Inc./The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Drastic inequality is by no means new in New York. Jacob A. Riis was called a muckraker after he chose to spotlight the city’s poverty at the turn of the 20th century by photographing it. Here: Sweatshop in Hester Street, 1889-1890. (Photo by Jacob A. Riis/Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Roger William Riis)