My spouse and I
visited the Lower East Side Tenement Museum on two con
secutive weekend days in
mid-February 2017 and then on a Saturday in early May 2017. We previously
visited the museum in 2010. The museum’s visitor center (at the corner of
Houston and Orchard Streets) is open daily from 10:00 am until 6:30 pm (except
on Thursday evenings until 8:30 pm). It sells books, unique souvenirs, and
drinks, offers a free 30-minute film, and provides restrooms and lockers in the
basement. (Lockers fit a large backpack or purse, coats, and/or shopping bags,
but they are not large enough to store a small rollaboard suitcase. Be sure to
bring a quarter [refundable] to work the lock.)
The Lower
East Side Tenement Museum, which is associated with the National Trust for
Historic Preservation, was created in 1988, when its founder
used extensive census, city archives, and artifacts to recreate a historical space
in the five-story tenement building. (Technically, a “tenement” is any
structure that houses multiple families; however, the word often has the
negative connotation of being run-down, overcrowded, or located in a less-affluent
area.) The building at 97 Orchard Street contains re-creations of several 325-square
foot shops and apartments arranged over five floors that offer a glimpse into
the lives of approximately 7,000 tenants from over 20 countries who lived there
at different times over a 70+ year period. Only the ground floor is handicap-accessible via a lift. Some of the
outdoor walking tours may offer limited accessibility because they do not enter
any buildings. Keep in mind that most of the tenement building does not have
air-conditioning (except for the Shop Life tour), so if you are sensitive to
the heat, you may want to visit on a cooler day. (You are permitted to bring
bottled water on the indoor tours, but no other drinks or food, and you are
asked not to take photographs or touch objects.)
You can visit the
Tenement Museum in several ways. You can tour a portion of the building in
order to visit the restored apartments/businesses of past residents/merchants
from different time periods, you can “meet” the residents (costumed actors who
portray past inhabitants), or you can take a walking tour of the neighborhood. Reportedly,
the museum is adding additional experiences in the fall of 2017, and it
sponsors special events, discussions, and unique tours, so be sure to check the
website for their current offerings.
Tenement tours are
extremely popular, especially on weekends and holidays, so it is advisable to
book your tours in advance in person, by telephone, or on their website (credit
cards are accepted). However, once you purchase your tickets, you cannot
exchange or return them. On the days that we visited, every tour on every day
was sold out by 12:00 noon, so plan ahead to avoid disappointment. (Most tours
accommodate only 15 or so patrons at a time, so demand is high and availability
is low.)
In 2010, we took an
indoor tour called “Irish Outsiders” and an outdoor walking tour called
“Outside the Home”. In February 2017, we took an indoor tour called “Shop Life”
and an outdoor walking tour called “Building on the Lower East Side”. In May
2017, we took an indoor tour called “Hard Times”, and an outdoor walking tour
called “Foods of the Lower East Side”. Descriptions of those tours follow, with
the indoor tours described first and the walking tours described next. Two
remaining tours on our “to do” list are a 60-minute indoor tour called
“Sweatshop Workers” and a 120-minute outdoor walking tour called “Then and
Now”. Indoor tours cost approximately $25 per adult, and outdoor walking tours cost
about $45. Some discounts may be available if you combine an indoor tour with a
walking tour; for example, with a promotion code that we found on their
website, we saved 40% on the cost of our walking tour after we purchased an
indoor tour. You can also purchase a membership to the museum, which allows
complimentary indoor tours and heavily discounted walking tours.
“Irish Outsiders”
(previously called “Meet the Moores”) is a 60-minute fourth-floor tour that
teaches you about the Joseph and Bridget Moore family, Irish immigrants who encounter prejudice as they celebrate
their identity. You visit their bedroom, parlor, and kitchen as they prepare for the city’s renowned St.
Patrick’s Day parade. (When we took this tour back in 2010, it centered on a
more somber event in their lives (instead of the parade.) On the tour, we also
visited a crumbling apartment in which we viewed projected images of immigrants
accompanied by period music.
“Shop Life” is a
90-minute ground floor tour that allows you to investigate some of the
businesses that occupied the street level of the building. We visited a
recreation of a 1870s German saloon (as well as the attached kitchen and
bedroom of its owners), an empty half-ruined apartment shell that shows layers
of paints and wallpapers (and a display case with relics unearthed during restoration
and preservation), and a storeroom that offers a clever interactive multi-media
glimpse at other businesses that once occupied the space (including a kosher
butcher, a 1930s auctioneer, and a 1970s undergarment discounter). Patrons use
motion-activated light tables to visually learn different information about the
past businesses, with accompanied sound provided through a listening device.
Video interviews with contemporary neighborhood shopkeepers link the past with
the present. The saloon portion of the tour showed how the Schneider family served the German
community (in an area once
called “Kleindeutschland”
or “Little Germany”), and how its barroom
functioned as a hub for business, politics, musical performances, mail
services, and family gatherings. The saloon features a wood bar, wood tables and
chairs, brass musical instruments, beer steins ready for the opening of a keg,
and plates heaped with food (which came with the purchase of beer). Shop Life
is one of the accessible tours that the museum offers, because you can access
the slightly below-street level spaces via a lift from the sidewalk. Shop Life
is also the only indoor tour that is air-conditioned (presumably because of the
multi-media system).
“Hard Times” is a 60-minute second-floor tour (led by Jakub, one of the
best educators that we had) in which we learned how two different families
weathered the economic
depressions in 1863 and 1935. We visited the restored homes of the
German-Jewish Gumpertz family (whose patriarch disappeared during the late
1800s), and the Italian-Catholic Baldizzi family (who lived through the Great
Depression). The most interesting aspect of this tour was when we viewed actual
photographs and listened to a recording of a descendant of the Baldizzi family
speaking about her early life in her 1930s childhood apartment, which she
helped to re-create.
“Outside the Home”
(previously called “Immigrant Soles”) is a 90-minute outdoor walking tour
during which we walked throughout the Lower East Side neighborhood to learn
about the immigrants who lived there for hundreds of years. We learned about buildings
including the Jarmulowsky Bank building (where immigrants deposited and then
lost their entire life savings), the Daily Forward building (where socialists
fought for worker’s rights), and Public School 42 (where generations of immigrant
children learned how to be “American”). Our guide (called an “educator”) showed
photographs of what the neighborhood and different buildings looked like over
time and we compared them to present day.
“Building on the
Lower East Side” is a 120-minute
outdoor walking tour during which we learned how its inhabitants changed the Lower
East Side, with a focus on various immigrant groups, a millionaire, a priest,
and its current residents. We heard about the history and origin of
local buildings, and about the architects, artists, and regular people who live
and work in the neighborhood. Led by
our educator/guide Lindsey, we looked at buildings including the Ideal
Hosiery shop, Seward Park, the Grand Street Guild (Monsignor Keogh, St. Mary’s,
and Section 8), Williamsburg Bridge (Delancey Street and Dashane Santana Way),
Suffolk and Rivington School, Suffolk Home Condos, Intermediate School 25
(designed during the “Brutalist” period), the Lowline Lab, and the Children’s
Magic Garden.
“Foods of the Lower East Side” is a 120-minute outdoor
walking tour (led by assistant Melissa and our educator) during which we made several
stops for food samples that represent the traditions of the past and present neighborhood
residents (who were German, Jewish, Italian, Caribbean, and Chinese). We
sampled Bavarian pretzels with mustard and cheese spread (from Café Katja),
“new” pickle slices and pickled pineapple (from the Pickle Guys), a cube of
Parmesan cheese wrapped in a sliver of sopressata (from DiPalo Fine Foods), two
different cheeses [one Vermont cheddar and one “Romeo and Juliet”, which is queso
blanco topped with a thin sliver of jellied guava] (from Saxelby Cheesemonger at
the Essex Street Market), Dominican crispy twice-fried plantains (from El
Castillo de Jagua), chocolate-covered hard pretzels (from Economy Candy); bagels
and “schmeer” (from Russ and Daughters), steamed pork or vegetable dumplings
(from Vanessa’s Dumpling House), and a dantat (from Grand 1 Bakery). Our tour
also included a bottle of water handed out when we departed the museum. Although
we enjoyed the food tour, our expectations did not match reality. When we took a
previous food tour in another country, we actually entered the establishments and
sat down inside to sample their food. In the tenement’s tour, we stood in front
of the vendors as we sampled their food, some of which was procured previously and
carried along by the guides, and other foods that were purchased fresh and hot
from the merchants. This tour was our least favorite of all the tours that we
took, but other patrons seemed to enjoy it.
We enjoyed our first visit to the Tenement Museum in 2010, and our second and
third visits in 2017 were even more enjoyable. We particularly liked seeing how
the museum has expanded over the years and how the Lower East Side neighborhood
has made positive changes. Although this is not a Manhattan attraction on the
“wow” scale like the Statue of Liberty or Times Square, it deserves a look.
