Tenement Museum Blog

Beyond Nostalgia: "Tour and Discussion" Programs Spark Public Dialogues

2012-01-25T14:30:00.000-05:00

"Waves of anti-immigrant hostility have made many in this country forget who and what we are."
--"The Nation's Cruelest Immigration Law”, The New York Times, Aug 28, 2011

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
--George Santayana

Immigration continues to be a highly contentious topic in this election year. Here at the Tenement Museum, our "Hard Times Tour and Discussion" program offers a place of reflection and collaborative learning about both historic and contemporary immigration issues.

During this program, participants from all over the world come together, hear the stories of immigrant families of the past, exchange their own personal stories, offer fresh perspectives, renew ideas and help make informed decisions. Opinions on these topics inevitably vary, and we’re careful to create a dialogue, not a debate in which one side tries to persuade the other. Our hope is that visitors experience this as democracy in action.

Whichever tour they choose, we want visitors to experience more than just nostalgia ("oh, those were the good old days...), or a sense of gratitude ("wow, I'm glad that I have a bathroom in my apartment"). In sharing the stories of immigrants' interior lives, we sometimes ask participants to seek common ground by recalling or discovering "the deep complexities of our relationship to the realities of immigration,” in the words of scholar Yolanda Chávez Leyva.

Great conversations start at 97 Orchard Street

Each of our post-tour dialogues contain the potential to inspire social responsibility. We hope that participants return to their communities after these conversations to plant the "seeds" of curiosity and engagement. By sharing their thoughts and experiences, participants can inspire others, in turn, to vote, volunteer, or simply to give more thought to the lives and experiences of immigrants.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas recently encouraged us to "… keep talking...Addressing our country's direction depends on a civilized and informed dialogue." The Tenement Museum’s post-tour discussions are the perfect place to engage in this dialogue by sharing your own unique thoughts and experiences. We hope you’ll join us soon!

"...overall we are each human, and THAT is what we must not forget." --A "Hard Times Tour and Discussion" participant

--Posted by Education Associate Lokki Chan

"Hard Times Tour and Discussion" is offered daily at 2:00 PM; we offered this, as well as other tour and discussion programs, to private groups as well. For more information, please contact Lokki Chan, Education Associate, 212-431-0233 ext. 221, or lchan@tenement.org

The Year of the Dragon Begins!

2012-01-23T15:17:00.000-05:00

The cold wet weather didn't stop revelers from celebrating the first day of the Lunar New Year in Chinatown today. The colors and sounds of this holiday are always a welcome reprieve from the winter gloom, so we strolled over from the Lower East Side to join the party and visit our neighbors.

Kids decked out in brightly colored costumes enjoyed the excitement, clapping along to the drums and throwing confetti.

A lion dance procession made its way through the neighborhood, accompanied by drums and cymbals. The brightly colored lions (often confused with dragons) visit local shops and restaurants to bring good luck in the year to come, taking offerings of money in red envelopes from proprietors.

Happy New Year to all--may the year of the Dragon be a great one!

From the Staff of Life to the Fluffy White Wonder: A Short History of Bread

2012-01-19T14:00:00.009-05:00

This is the first in a series of 6 articles by Educator Judy Levin, originally written as research for our “Foods of the Lower East Side" tasting tour. During the coldest months of January and February, we're offering a modified indoor version of the tour.

Most cultures have had one complex carbohydrate at the center of their diets: potatoes or grains like rice, sorghum, corn, barley, rye, oats, millet, and wheat. Bread made from some of these cereals is one of those staples, its importance reflected in Western religions and languages: The Lord’s Prayer says “give us this day our daily bread.” The word lord is from the Old English for “keeper of the loaf.” Dough and bread are slang for money. A companion is someone you eat bread with. Long before potatoes or corn arrived in Europe, bread was the “staff of life.”

“Staff of life” bread is dark, made from whole wheat or mixtures of wheat, rye, barley, millet, and oats. German pumpernickel is whole-grain rye flour baked until nearly black. Its name—dialect for “devil’s fart”— reminds us that dark breads can be difficult to digest. But rye grows where wheat cannot, in bad soil and cold climates. Other peasant breads are “black” only in contrast to “white” loaves. English brown bread could contain rye, barley, and buckwheat. Some Italian breads included the bran and germ removed from the wheat so that whiter flour could be sold to the rich.

An Italian Bakery on Bleecker Street c.1937; Image Courtesy the New York Public Library

The desire for white(r) bread is ancient. In Rome 2000 years ago, “to know the color of one’s bread” meant to know one’s place in society. Rich people ate bread of finely ground wheat, there and elsewhere, because wheat flour develops more gluten than other flours and rises better. The wealthy French of the 1600s ate bread made whiter and lighter with the addition of milk and of yeast from brewing beer. But truly white bread couldn’t be made from stone-ground flour. It wasn’t ground finely enough and there was no technology that removed all the bran and germ—the brown part that contains the nutrients and flavor. Technological improvements in 1834 (steel rollers) and 1880s (high-speed rollers and mechanical blowers to remove bean and germ) made finer flour, but it was still faintly yellow.

By the 18th century bakers bleached flour and adulterated bread to make it whiter. 20th century Wonder Bread is the extreme outcome of the search for white bread. Its whiteness and plastic wrapping showed that it was clean, sterile, and untouched by human hands. Added sugar and chemicals speeded the baking process and created a long shelf life. By the 1920s our daily bread was truly white and then, in the 1930s, sliced and wrapped in plastic.

An early advertisement for Wonder bread

Stories and memoires of the immigrant experience of bread offer contradictory images. The Fleischmann family, Jews from Hungary, established their yeast company after the Civil War because they so disliked American bread that they brought over their brother—and their family’s yeast. Yet numerous immigrant narratives speak of the astonishing white bread first tasted on Ellis Island. Many children of immigrants write of being ashamed to bring their un-American homemade or dark bread to school.

By the 1960s, some Americans were rebelling against the “white bread” culture of the 1950s, seeking foods—including bread—that were healthier, tastier, and more varied than Wonder Bread. African-Americans, reclaiming their cultural “roots,” encouraged the children and grandchildren of immigrants to reconsider their own history. Assimilated European-Americans felt nostalgia for the cultures they’d left behind. Ethnic restaurants flourished. And an ad campaign showed a stereotypical Native American, Italian mama, or Asian kid eating rye bread with the slogan, “You Don’t Have to be Jewish to Love Levy’s Real Jewish Rye.” Now commercial pumpernickel is dyed brown instead of bleached white.

A 1960's advertisement for Levy's Jewish rye bread

People have always moved from one place to another. Whether they do so as conquerors or immigrants, they tend to hang on to their basic carbohydrate.

--Posted by Tenement Museum Educator Judy Levin

Working With Family: Educators Respond to the Family Literacy Project

2012-01-16T10:04:00.002-05:00

Jess Underwood Varma and Raj Varma are a married team of Tenement Museum Educators who recently facilitated our Family Literacy project. Here, they reflect on the project and draw parallels between their work and their personal experiences as a couple.

As Educators at the museum, we see school groups and visitors from all over the world pour through 97 Orchard Street. We believe that the shared experience of simply being human can enable anyone to make a personal connection to the stories we tell. It's always rewarding to see someone's heart broken open or world-view expanded at the museum.

There's something about the Shared Journeys program, though, that transcends even the everyday rewards of being a Tenement Educator. Connecting the past to the present with immigrants who are living the experience NOW is a vital, immediate, and often moving experience. Shared Journeys participants often speak about the challenges of raising a family in a country different from the one they were born in. This is why Raj and I were so excited when Pedro presented his vision of the Family Literacy Program, which would bring immigrant parents and their children together to share in the Tenement experience. It was such an honor to participate in piloting the new program.

Raj grew up in New Zealand, the son of Indian immigrants, and his childhood was shaped by that dual identity. When our relationship and our marriage brought him to New York City, he became an immigrant himself. I am a composite of many generations of immigrant forebears: when we have children, they will be New Zealand-Indian-German-Hungarian-French-Irish-Jewish-Hindu Americans. As a couple, we often wonder which components of their heritage will be most important our children, and what, as parents, will be most vital to us to pass along to them. How do you pass on all the nuances, and foster your children's sense of pride in who they are? How do you balance all of that identity stuff with the immediate and pressing demands of everyday life?

Jess Underwood Varma and Raj Varma at their 2008 Wedding

During our Family Literacy pilot, we met families from several countries: Pakistan, Yemen, Mexico, and Peru, just to name a few. The program took place over a couple of nights. These families are typical and also remarkable; parents who hold down jobs that require them to work long hours, who also engage in the balancing act of raising a family in New York City. That's challenging enough for anyone, and on top of it all, they are committed to learning English at the same time. The fact that they had taken a few nights out of their busy lives to come to the museum was humbling.

The first night included a visit to the Rogarshevsky apartment to talk about preserving tradition, and the creation of a collage that represented various aspects of the family identity; things they like to do together, foods they eat, and so much more. The best part was seeing the families share things with each other, parents explaining traditions, children making connections, many moments of laughter, and some teary moments as well. A favorite moment was when little Luz Maria, or Lucy, said, "I'm proud to be Mexican, because we have such good dancing and food." She then proceeded to pull a homemade tamale out of her backpack, and offered to share it with us. We had no choice but to accept.

Jess and Raj with Coworkers and Family Literacy Participants

By the second night, the kids greeted us like old friends, and we all braided challah bread together in the demonstration kitchen. Everyone giggled a lot, including those busy parents. We wonder what Fanny Rogarshevsky would have made of that scene; she would probably be a little bemused, but we like to think she would also be pleased. Perhaps it would fascinate her to know that just like in her family one hundred years ago, immigrant families are still balancing the need to make a living with the desire to preserve tradition, and still navigating the desires of the immigrant generation with the desires of their American-raised kids. They are still weaving together their complicated identities just like a loaf of fresh-baked challah bread.

--Posted by Tenement Museum Educators Jess Underwood-Varma and Raj Varma

A Broken Ankle and a Twist of Fate: Uncovering the Stories of 103 Orchard

2012-01-11T10:00:00.000-05:00

Adina Langer completed an internship at the Tenement Museum in 2008. Below is an excerpt of her final report, which details one of the most interesting stories she discovered in researching the past residents of 103 Orchard Street.

When I started my work on the residents of 103 Orchard Street, I immediately appreciated the foundations laid by my predecessor. Thanks to her work, I already knew that 103 Orchard encompassed what had once been 103, 105 and 107 Orchard as well as 81-83 Delancey street. She had found enlistment records for Italian-born men who were residents of the building in 1942, and Chinese men who lived in the building in the 60s and 70s. But I was especially fascinated by the results of her research into the Surrogate's Court plaintiff records. These records revealed that in 1910, 81 Delancey Street resident Bessie Gold sued the building owner, Joseph Marcus, and his lessee Samuel Appel for negligent upkeep of the building's stairs. Gold contended that their negligence caused her to slip down the stairs and break her ankle, preventing her from dancing in the theater. This resulted in her demotion to the role of a singer, reducing her income.

Dancers Miriam Carson and Florence Williams were Bessie Gold's contemporaries

Bessie Gold's story immediately fascinated me. Here was a young Jewish woman who lived with her mother Lena in a tenement apartment. Her occupation was listed in the 1910 federal census as “dancer and singer in the theater.” Her mother was a “wardrobe lady.” In 1910, Bessie Gold was 24. She was born in England and immigrated to the United States with her mother in 1887 when she was only 1 year old. By 1910, she was established enough in her new home to try her luck in the city court system and her suit was moderately successful. She recovered a few thousand dollars in damages.

Even before I delved into the surrogate's court records, Bessie and Lena Gold's story sent my mind into fits of wild speculation. Bessie was born in London. Had Lena been an actress in London? What drove her to leave for America without her husband? Bessie spoke English, but Yiddish was her mother's native tongue. Where did Bessie perform? Was it the Yiddish theater? Smalltime Vaudeville? If she hadn’t broken her ankle, would she have played the Palace one day?

Studying the surrogate's court records raised additional questions. Marcus and Appel's counter arguments challenge the severity of Bessie’s ankle injury prompting Bessie to describe her convalescence in detail in the court records. She was confined to her apartment for 15 weeks-- 9 of those weeks spent entirely in bed. Doctor's visits and bills were costly (although she was able somehow to pay them). Gold wore a plaster cast for 16 weeks and after the cast was removed, she bathed the leg and foot in sea salt twice daily and a masseuse came to massage the foot. Nevertheless, her doctor contended that the injury would be permanent. Bessie would never dance in the theater again.

This court case raises interesting questions about common medical practices, resources for small-time actors who lived on the Lower East Side and the spread of knowledge about the American legal system through the immigrant community.

After her modest court settlement, Bessie Gold left the theater permanently and moved out of the building. At the municipal archives, I learned that she married Henry Reissman in 1910. He was a furrier who owned his own business. Together, they had three children, Sidonia, Seymour and Myron. By 1920 they owned a home in Brooklyn-- Lena lived with them. But the 1930 census revealed a family hit by the great depression. Bessie was working as a laborer and Henry as an “errand boy.” Lena wasn’t mentioned. Fortunately, they still owned their home in Brooklyn. Bessie died suddenly of a head injury in 1942. Research into her last will and testament revealed that upon her death, her husband and daughter were still living in Brooklyn but her two sons were on army bases in the South. Seymour was part of the 753rd Tank Battalion in Virgina. Perhaps Myron had inherited his mother's musical talent--he was listed as being part of the NATTO band, based in Memphis Tennessee.

Bessie Gold's family's stories continue after her death. The New York Times revealed that Sidonia was engaged to marry a Private named Rosen later in 1942. Ancestry.com revealed possible death dates and locations for Seymour Reissman and Sidonia Rosen. The researcher who follows me will likely search for Seymour's will in the Nassau County surrogate's courthouse. Sidonia Rosen may have died in Rockville Maryland in 2007. If living descendants are found, the Tenement Museum will make every effort to contact them.

When Gold gave up any dreams of fame in vaudeville, would she ever have dreamed she would become a social historian's subject in 2008? Most likely not. But exactly that quality that makes her story both ordinary and unique gives me hope that she will be woven into future interpretive plans at the Tenement Museum.

--Posted by Adina Langer

Class Warfare, Black Gotham and Much More: A First Look at 2012 Tenement Talks

2012-01-09T10:00:00.012-05:00

Another exciting year of Tenement Talks is here! We're thrilled to present Tenement Talks in our newly expanded space (to read about our new shop opening click here) and we've got a dynamic schedule of authors, journalists, chefs and architects for 2012. Here's a sampling of what's coming up.

Thursday, January 19th – Class Warfare with Steven Brill
Award-winning journalist Steven Brill takes an uncompromising look at the adults who are fighting over America’s failure to educate its children—and points his suggested way to reversing that failure.

Tuesday, January 24th – Behind the Scenes: The Hebrew Technical Institute and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum with Dave Favaloro
Founded in 1883, the Hebrew Technical Institute (HTI) offered an industrial arts education to young Jewish boys in NYC. Director of Curatorial Affairs and HTI Research Fellow, David Favaloro, will discuss the relationship between HTI and our historic tenement, 97 Orchard Street.

Thursday, January 26th – New York Diaries: 1609-2009 with Teresa Carpenter
New York Times best selling author, Teresa Carpenter curates this collection of journal entries, selected from four centuries of writing from the 1600s to the present day allowing New York natives and visitors, writers and artists, thinkers and bloggers, to reach across time and share vivid snapshots of life in the city.

Tuesday, February 7th - Behind the Scenes: A Biography of 103 Orchard Street
Explore the 123 year history of 103 Orchard Street, the Tenement Museum’s new visitor and education center. How has the building been altered over time? Who lived and worked here? What stories have Museum researchers uncovered?

Monday, February 13th - Investigate This: Conversations with ProPublica
Eyes on the Stimulus: Money Well Spent?
ProPublica reporter Michael Grabell will discuss his investigation of the 2009 stimulus project and his new book Money Well Spent?

Wednesday, February 29th – Black Gotham: A Family History of African American in Nineteenth-Century New York with Carla Peterson
Carla Peterson challenges many of the accepted "truths" about African-American history, including the assumption that the phrase "nineteenth-century black Americans" means enslaved people, that "New York state before the Civil War" refers to a place of freedom, and that a black elite did not exist until the twentieth century.

Thursday, March 1st Jews and Booze with Marni Davis
Marni Davis delves into the history of making and selling liquor, wine, and beer— revealing that alcohol commerce played a crucial role in the Jewish immigrant experience and the growth of Jewish communities in the United States.

Monday, March 12 Investigate This: Conversations with ProPublica
Women in Media
In honor of Women’s History Month, a trio of ProPublica’s female journalists will share their thoughts on working in the male-dominated news business.

Thursday, March 15: Highline: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the SkyWith: Joshua David and Robert Hammond
The Highline attracted more than 300,000 people in the first 6 weeks it was open. Since then, it attracts close to 20,000 a weekend in the spring and summer months. Designers, founders, and architects Joshua David and Robert Hammond discuss the radical transformation of a derelict elevated railway into a grand-and beloved-open space.

Tuesday, March 20: Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York with Richard Zacks introduced by Kevin Baker
Richard Zacks tells the story of the era when Theodore Roosevelt was appointed New York City police commissioner and eagerly tried to shut down brothels, gambling joints and after-hour saloons. However, he was never successful and learned the hard way that New York loves its sin much more then its salvation.

Thursday, April 5: UNTERZAKHN with Leela Corman
Leela Corman presents a graphic novel of immigrant life on the Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of twin sisters whose lives take radically and tragically different paths.

For the most up-to-date talk listings please visit www.tenementmuseum.org/vizcenter_events.

If you would like to attend any of our events please email events@tenementmuseum.org

Finally, it you are unable to attend Tenement Talk you can watch it live online at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tenement-talks

Don’t forget to also follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tenementmuseum

-Posted by Kathryn Hennessy

1000 Memories

2012-01-05T10:00:00.018-05:00

You've heard of Facebook and Twitter, but there's a lesser-known social network called "1000 Memories" that might be particularly interesting to fans of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. 1000 Memories is an online social platform for uploading, organizing, and sharing photographs, both historical and personal. And because memories come in so many shapes and sizes, 1000 Memories also supports content in the form of audio, video, stories, documents, and quotes, and allows users to add dates, tags, and captions to digitized photos. 1000 Memories aims to permanently preserve digital photographs—they work with the non-profit Internet Archive to ensure that uploaded content is never lost.

On 1000 Memories, users store content in a virtual “shoebox”. Users can elect to allow friends and family members to also add to their shoeboxes, creating a shared online memory quilt. Users can also create a "Family Tree" to map their family heritage with digital photographs, documents, video, audio, etc. It also connects family members and their shoeboxes in one integrated location, creating a shared, visual dialogue of memories. Whereas a program like Historypin showcases photographs, video, and audio in the context of a geographical location, 1000 Memories displays content within the context of connections between family and friends.

A 1000 Memories Family Tree page

Want to see how it works? Click here for a sample Family Tree of Tolkien’s beloved hobbit, Bilbo Baggins. And click here for Ernest Hemingway’s Family Tree.

A recently launched smartphone application called "Shoebox by 1000 Memories" makes the network mobile, utilizing the iPhone’s camera feature as a convenient mobile scanner. While the app is at present only available on the iPhone, mobile developers are currently working on a version for Android. Traditionally, scanning photos has been an arduous and expensive process. But with Shoebox, users simply take a picture of an old photograph or document and upload it to their 1000 Memories profiles through the iPhone application.

Curious? Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments section!

Uploading a photo to 1000 Memories

--Posted by Information Technology Assistant Kathryn Barnard

Having fun with History and Challah: Our New Family Literacy Program

2012-01-03T12:45:00.000-05:00

I’ve managed the Museum’s ESOL program, Shared Journeys, for the last 3 years. It's been incredibly rewarding to develop new programs, write lesson plans, and pilot, promote and implement our workshops. New immigrants learning English always bring a different perspective to our museum.

Over the last 5 years there’s been a growing demand to work with entire immigrant families. In response to this, we’ve recently launched a Family Literacy program, a new way to teach English and learn about adjusting to life in the U.S. Participating families come together to have fun, learn and adjust to a new life together.

Visiting the Rogarshevsky home at 97 Orchard

We recently piloted this new Family Literacy programwith the help of collaborators including La Guardia Community College’s Center for Immigrant Education and Training and the Fifth Avenue Committee. Ten families took a couple of hours from their busy lives for a multi-session program to spend time together, learn about immigration history, compare their own stories to the ones in the past and have fun as a family. We shared the story of the Rogarshevsky family, an observant Lithuanian-Jewish family that lived in our building in 1915. We titled the workshop “Preserving Tradition in a New Environment” because the family struggled with preserving their Jewish faith while working long hours in garment factories. Abraham, Fannie and their 6 children lived in a small tenement apartment of 97 Orchard Street.

Making collages about favorite family activities

With the help of Kathryn Lloyd, Jess Varma and Raj Varma we told the story of how the American work week often compelled Jewish immigrants—especially children—to work on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath. The Sabbath is an important day of rest sacred for an observant Jewish family. This story sparked reactions from the Shared Journeys families. I recall a Peruvian family sharing how difficult it was for them to have to work during Christmas. In their native land this was a time to rest and not work. A Pakistani-Muslim family shared how they would try to work around their religious beliefs. For example, the father of the family runs a little shop and this allows him to shut down in order to pray five times a day.

Some of the families got to come back to the Museum and use our brand-new demonstration kitchen to try their hands at making traditional Challah bread like the Rogarshevsky family would have eaten. Miriam Bader led them through a simple demonstration, and the families got to take some samples home and bake them. At the end all of them got to share their own recipes for Christmas.
It’s been exciting to watch this program come together. My hope is that many more immigrant families will experience it in the months to come.

Braiding dough for Challah

--Posted by Education Associate Pedro Garcia

A History of Two Holidays

2011-12-23T10:00:00.006-05:00

This year, the Hanukkah and Christmas holidays will overlap, with the fourth night of the Jewish festival of lights falling on Christmas Eve. Since we'll be celebrating both at the same time in 2011, it seems like a good time to consider the relationship between these two holidays.

If you've been on our "Hard Times" (formerly known as "Getting By") tour, you know a bit about the German-Jewish Gumpertz family, who resided at 97 Orchard in the 1870's and 80's, when the neighborhood was known as Kleindeutschland or "Little Germany". German immigrants formed this community based on their shared language, food and culture, but their religious practices were diverse: about 1/3 of the families were Catholic, 1/3 Protestant and 1/3 Jewish. Because this diversity was reflected in the population of 97 Orchard Street, Nathalie Gumpertz lived among many Lutheran neighbors who celebrated Christmas, including the Schneider family who ran the lager beer saloon downstairs.

A menorah (traditional candelabra used at Hanukkah) in the Gumpertz home at 97 Orchard Street

As American Jewish communities grew throughout the 19th Century, the relatively minor holiday of Hanukkah gained significance in the United States. This can be attributed to Hanukkah's proximity to Christmas, as well as the close quarters shared by urban immigrant families of different faiths. As Andrew Heinze writes in Adapting to Abundance, "The drama of Christmas exerted a strong influence on Jewish newcomers, as the spectacle of the Christmas tree and the rite of gift giving altered the celebration of Chanukah" (1).

Jewish children were particularly enchanted with the very visible public display of Christmas gifts and decorations in media, shop windows and schools, prompting parents to enhance their holiday celebrations with Hanukkah gifts and even Christmas trees of their own. Heinze paints a vivid picture of Hanukkah celebrations in the Lower East Side, saying that "Passengers on the Second Avenue "El" train...in the darkness of a December evening were struck by the rows of burning candles that illuminated the windows of tenement house after tenement house." (1)

Children admire holiday toy displays c.1908; Image courtesy Library of Congress

The earliest reference to Hanukkah in the online archive of the New York Times, dated December 29, 1889, focuses on Christian and Jewish communities celebrating winter holidays in tandem (or consecutively). The article, titled "A Jewish View of Christmas" is a re-printed message from the Jewish Messenger: "We Hebrews, disguise it as we may, cannot but feel the genial influence of the Christmastide. It meets us just as our joyous feast of Hanukkah has ended, which we celebrate with similar bounty. But we realize, none the less, the gentler aspects of the holiday, and strive to recognize as a daily lesson 'peace on earth, good will toward men'". (2)

Christmas Greetings c.1911

(1) Andrew R. Heinze, Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrant, Mass Consumption and the Search for American Identity, Columbia University Press, 1990
(2) "A Jewish View of Christmas", The New York Times, December 29, 1889

Emma Lazarus: Poet of Exiles

2011-12-19T10:00:00.004-05:00

You're probably familiar with a poem called "The New Colossus" that includes the line “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” It's an essential part of the American immigrant narrative that unfolded at Ellis Island in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

However, you may be less familiar with the poem's author, Emma Lazarus, a lifelong New Yorker born in 1849. Through the Summer of 2012, the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan is presenting Emma Lazarus: Poet of Exiles--the first major museum exhibit about Lazarus. This is a rare opportunity to learn more about a remarkable woman who broke gender barriers and left an important mark on American history.

Emma Lazarus

Though her Sephardic Jewish family had deep roots in the United States dating back to the colonial era, Lazarus lived through a period of unprecedented immigration. Living in New York, she witnessed the impact of thousands of newcomers beginning their lives in a new world. She captures the profound nature of this chapter of American history in "The New Colossus", her most famous work:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

--Emma Lazarus, 1883

To learn more about the life and work of Emma Lazarus, visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan.

--Posted by Kira Garcia

Creating Bridget Moore

2011-12-16T10:00:00.000-05:00

Education Associate Sarah Litvin spent months preparing for our new "Meet Bridget" tour, which allows school children to visit with a costumed interpreter portraying Irish immigrant Bridget Moore, who lived at 97 Orchard Street in the 1860's. Here, she shares her thoughts on the process of bringing Bridget to life.

To transform the Irish Outsiders tour from a third to a first person narrative, I embarked on a major research project. Not only would our Costumed Interpreters need to know everything about Bridget Moore's experience at 97 Orchard Street, but they would also need to know everything that happened to Bridget up until that point.

Educator Emily Gallagher as Bridget Moore, visiting with school children

To build Bridget's memories,I divided Bridget's life into a few segments, and then learned everything I could about each one.

What was home life like in Ireland when Bridget was growing up? What was the life as a domestic servant like in New York City in the mid-1860s?
What do we know about life as a young married woman in the FIve Points area?
How did Bridget accomplish the day-to-day aspects of life at 97 Orchard Street?

This research then became a sourcebook which each actress training to play Bridget Moore must master.

In addition to building Bridget's memories, we also had to learn how Bridget Moore would have dressed and how she would have spoken. With the help of a fantastic summer intern, Jessica Pushor, and the inimitable scholar of Irish domestics, Margaret Lynch-Brennan, we uncovered some really neat sources.

To learn how Bridget Moore would have dressed, Jessica did extensive research into the dress of Irish peasantry, domestics in New York, and maternity clothing in mid-19th century. She unearthed the below photograph of an Irish domestic, which we used as the primary source to base our Bridget Moore costume.

For language, the source that proved most useful was a novel written in 1861 by Ann Sadlier, a woman who was, herself, an Irish domestic in New York before becoming an author.

The novel, Bessy Conway, is available online for free. It follows a young Irish emigrant from her home in Ardfinnan, County Tipperary, to New York. In her seven year stint as a domestic, Bessy encounters and learns to fight temptation in the big city. As she sees friends fall victim to drink, materialism, and lust around her, Bessy navigates the straight and narrow (and religious!) path. It was a great read and a great source to give insight into the irish immigrant communitiy in New York.

Here are a few choice ninetheenth-century Irish immigrant-isms we dicovered:
P.D.A: "Pour Dire Adieu" (To say godbye)
I don't care a snap: I don't care at all
shin-dig: a party
neither chick nor child: bachelor
astore: my darling
crummy: milk cow
posset: warm drink of sweet and sour milk

--Posted by Education Associate Sarah Litvin

A Faux Feast

2011-12-13T10:00:00.001-05:00

We're stocking up on food here at the Tenement Museum, but it's not for a holiday party. It's faux food for our upcoming exhibit "Shop Life" which will explore the many businesses housed at 97 Orchard over the years, including a 19th Century German saloon run by John Schneider and his wife Caroline. While these replicas wouldn't taste very good, they sure look the part! Historic faux food expert Sandy Levins meticulously crafted each piece.

A pitcher of milk, Blutwurst Sausage, Sauerbraten in a pot, and Lebkuchen

Lebkuchen (in the rectangular pan) is a traditional treat from Nuremberg, Germany, where John Schneider was born. Similar to gingerbread, this cookie is flavored with spices like aniseed, coriander, cloves, ginger, cardamom and allspice, as well as nuts including almonds, hazelnuts, and walnuts, or candied fruit.

Cut Lebkuchen (in the octagonal bowl), Pig's Feet, Heaven and Earth, Almonds, and Sauerkraut

"Himmel und Erde" or "Heaven and Earth", in the top right pot above, is a traditional German mixture of mashed potatoes and apples.

Traditional German pretzels--these look delicious!

Pickles are still a favorite treat here in the Lower East Side

If you've been on our "Foods of the Lower East Side" tour, you've sampled traditional German pretzels and pickles just like these. Though they've been thoroughly Americanized, both of these foods originate in immigrant communities.

The "Slop Bucket"

The Slop Bucket was a particular challenge to create. Caroline Schneider wouldn't have wasted much in her kitchen--food was a precious commodity. Here we have what is essentially a 19th-Century compost bin, with grape stems, apple cores, eggshells and various peels, all re-created in precise detail.

"Shop Life" will open in 2012--we'll keep you posted as the exhibit develops!
For more information about Sandy Levin's work creating replica foods, visit http://historicfauxfoods.com/workshop.shtml.

A Virtual "Visit" With Victoria!

2011-12-07T10:00:00.004-05:00

Over the past few weeks, there have been several sightings of a fourteen year-old resident of 97 Orchard Street, Victoria Confino, in Greenville County, South Carolina. She’s been transported via video conference into the classrooms of the entire 5th grade at Greenville County Schools—eight classes in total.

If you live more than a stone’s throw outside New York City, but know a student who you would like to Meet Victoria Confino, check out our Virtual Visit with Victoria program. From their home classroom, students take on the role of new immigrants in 1916 and virtually “visit” a costumed interpreter portraying 14-year-old Victoria Confino in her tenement apartment through a real-time video conference.

Educator Jess Varma as Victoria Confino

Visitors ask Victoria questions about adjusting to life on the Lower East Side. Students’ questions, interest, and level guide the Costumed Interpreter’s story through topics such as why people immigrate, cultural adaptation, the immigrant communities of Manhattan’s lower east side, and the definition of “American.” This program may be adapted for all levels of American History.

Here’s how it works:

1. Teacher prepares students for Confino Program using Distance Learning Teacher Preparation Materials, a step-by-step introduction to the experience of immigrating in 1916, the lower east side, and tenement life using the power point and activities provided as well as the Tenement Museum website, www.tenement.org.

2. Teacher works with students to brainstorm questions to ask Victoria Confino.

3. Students virtually “visit” with a Costumed Interpreter portraying Victoria Confino in her restored tenement apartment and interact with the costumed interpreter to ask questions about her apartment, jobs, clothes, food, culture, language, school, fun, etc. to learn her immigration story, and discover what their new lives will be like at 97 Orchard Street.

4. (Optional) Teacher leads students in a follow-up discussion of whether or not they would want to live at 97 Orchard Street in 1916 and engage in an age-appropriate activity that bridges the experience of immigrating in the past with the experience of immigration in the present.

The Museum uses a Polycom EX ViewStation unit for this program. Organizations that are setup with a similar unit, Polycom or other brands, should be able to participate. For more information, or to schedule a visit, email groups@tenement.org or call (212) 431-0233 ext. 255

--Posted by Education Associate Sarah Litvin

Why I'm a Museum Member: Meet Rosalie Reinhardt

2011-12-01T10:17:00.000-05:00

If we may be so bold, the generous and thoughtful folks who make up our group of Tenement Museum Members are pretty exceptional! Through their financial and intellectual support, they help keep the Tenement Museum strong, making sure we can continue to offer free ESL classes and tours for local community organizations. They also help support our educational programs--last year we welcomed more than 30,000 school children!

We try to thank our members whenever we can, so last night we invited them to a special reception to celebrate Harvey Wang's new exhibit of photographs at 103 Orchard Street. Rosalie Reinhardt, a lifelong New Yorker, is one of our long-standing supporters. She's been a Museum Member for 9 years!

Tenement Museum Member Rosalie Reinhardt Says: "This is New York!"

If you ask Rosalie why she supports the Tenement Museum, she'll start by telling you that her mother Maisha was a Russian immigrant who received the new American name "Mary" at Ellis Island. Like so many other newcomers, Mary lived on the Lower East Side when she first arrived in the U.S. She met and married Rosalie's father at the age of 16 and helped him run his business as a glazier in Brooklyn.

It's clear that Rosalie still feels a deep connection to her mother's heritage. Acknowledging that there are many other worthy cultural organizations in New York, she supports the Tenement Museum specifically because it "speaks directly to my family's history", which is true for many of our members. Through the Tenement Museum, Rosalie supports her New York City community through our free and low-cost programs, while also enjoying the benefits of a great cultural institution!

Our deepest thanks to Rosalie and all of our Museum Members and visitors, who help keep us relevant and strong year after year. To become a member and enjoy free Museum admission and other benefits, visit our web site here.

Inside 103 Orchard: Students Experiment with Creative Re-use

2011-11-29T11:56:00.000-05:00

At our new Visitor and Education Center, 2nd and 3rd grade students visiting the Tenement Museum for our Meet the Residents program can tap into their own ingenuity to make something from nothing. During a new activity called Creative Re-use, students are inspired by the resourcefulness of the immigrants who lived in 97 Orchard Street. A puppet made from a sock, a rug made from rags and even a scooter made from a crate and some wood scraps serve as examples of the ways former residents creatively reused what they had to make the things they needed.

Doll in a stylish striped poncho

As the students sit comfortably in our bright, brand-new classrooms, they have the opportunity to creatively r-euse discarded materials and transform them into masterpieces. Using items from the recycling bins at the Museum and donations from Materials for the Arts, New York City’s ultimate reuse center, along with lots of imagination, students have been busy making toys and games.

As they work, students consider how they can creatively reuse the things around them. Recycling bins become treasure troves, scraps become dolls, puppets, airplanes, and even angry birds and Pokémon characters.

A see-through polka-dot airplane

It’s been quite amazing to see the students’ resourcefulness and even more remarkable to watch them curiously look around with wonder at the possibility of making something from nothing.

--Posted by Miriam Bader, Director of Education

Out Harvey Wang's Window

2011-11-21T13:07:00.001-05:00

The Tenement Museum differs from most museums in that our collection is displayed in re-created apartments, rather than galleries. While we've presented temporary visual art exhibits in our storefront windows (and even in the apartments at 97 Orchard Street, back in our early days), the Museum hasn't had a purpose-build gallery space until this fall. This gives us an exciting new opportunity to present new perspectives on immigration, New York City history, architecture and other themes.

We're inaugurating our new exhibition space within the Visitor Center at 103 Orchard Street with "Out Harvey Wang's Window", an exhibition of Lower East Side photographs by Harvey Wang. Below, Tenement staffer Alana Rosen reflects on Harvey's work and our unusual curatorial process.

Harvey Wang, Mr. Wong's Kitchen, 1980

Harvey Wang, a New York photographer and filmmaker, took photographs of the Lower East Side for many years. In our exhibit, we focus on the black and white pictures he took in the 1970's and 80's. The images feature storefronts and local businesses, activities unfolding in the streets, and portraits of Lower East Side residents. The pictures aptly represent the diversity, energy, and uniqueness of the LES during that time. Although the neighborhood has vastly changed over the past 30 years, there is still a deep sense of history, culture, and vigor.

Harvey Wang, Essex Street, 1979

After I saw the photographs and learned that the staff was developing a gallery guide for the exhibit, I knew I wanted to be part of the project. The exhibit was developed in a very democratic way--staff members from every department voted to decide which photographs would be included. We also answered questions about our reactions to the photos and how we felt they related to the Museum and its mission. These short texts are included in the Gallery Guide we've created for visitors. It was fascinating to hear what my co-workers had to say. I love piecing together the history of those who lived and worked in the Lower East Side, and becoming part of the neighborhood's history myself.

Harvey Wang, Cleveland Place, 1980

Occupy Wall Street's Historic Precedent

2011-11-18T12:56:00.001-05:00

Standing in the lamp-lit nineteenth century apartments of 97 Orchard Street, it's easy to see big differences between the past and the present. But frequently, current events echo the histories we explore here at the Tenement Museum. For example, Occupy Wall Street's recent eviction from Zuccotti Park is particularly reminiscent of a moment in history we explore in our "Hard Times" tour (until recently, it was known as "Getting By").

As its name suggests, "Hard Times" focuses on times of economic hardship for Americans. During this tour visitors learn about the struggles of the Gumpertz family, who lived through a national economic calamity known as the Panic of 1873 and its aftermath. During these years, German immigrant shoe-maker Julius Gumpertz and his wife faced tremendous economic and emotional stress--and they were in good company: 25% of New Yorkers were out of work at the time.

Seeking an avenue to express their frustration, and demanding that the government address the problem of unemployment, thousands of workers, many of them German immigrants, gathered in and around Tompkins Square Park on January 13, 1874.

Protesters in Tompkins Square Park, 1874

In an article with the same date, the New York Times reported that, though the "Police Commission wisely refused permission to the Communists to parade yesterday...by 10 o'clock Tompkins Square and vicinity were occupied by 3,000 persons of the lowest class, most of whom, however, were probably there out of idle curiosity". (1)

Despite the article's dismissive tone, the event made history. Police and protesters clashed, and in the ensuing fray, many were injured and arrested. This sparked a public dialogue about police brutality, free speech, and the right to public assembly, sowing the seeds of the American labor movement.

The subsequent clash with police; Image Courtesy the Library of Congress

Two weeks later the Times quoted Mrs. Charles Lilienthal, who had been an eye-witness to the riot and was "horrified" by the events. Speaking at a community meeting about the January 13 events, Lilienthal contradicted the characterization of the Times' prior article, asking "What citizens were those that wanted to meet in Tompkins Square?...they were a portion of positively our best class of citizens. They were the true tax-payers. They were working men!"(2)

Later in the meeting, according to the article, the group made a series of resolutions denouncing the behavior of the police and asserting their right to peaceful assembly.

As the future of the Occupy Wall Street movement is determined this week, history is both being made and repeated here in New York City.

To read more on this topic, check out the Gotham Center's article, "Before 'Occupy Wall Street': Notes on prior New York City protests against economic crises".

1. The New York Times, "Defeat of the Communists: Mass Meeting and Parade Broken Up", January 14 1874
2. The New York Times, "Mass Meeting at Cooper Institute", January 31 1874

The Doors Are Open at 103 Orchard Street!

2011-11-11T12:07:00.001-05:00

Today's the big day! We've opened the doors and welcomed the first members of the public to our new Visitor and Education Center at the corner of Orchard and Delancey. The Center gives us 10,000 square feet of additional space, including classrooms, a screening room and our first purpose-built gallery space.

Tenement Staffers Katie Barnard and Rachael Grygorcewicz unlocked the door at 10 a.m., making it official.

11/11/11 has been appropriately lucky for the Tenement Museum so far, as we've had a smooth transition to 103 Orchard Street.

We think it's a very good sign that everyone felt right at home immediately. Visitors enjoyed leisurely browsing our expanded bookshop, as well as the new gallery space featuring the exhibit "Out Harvey Wang's Window".

Out with the chalkboard, in with technology! Our new ticketing screens show up-to-date tour information and are easier to read, making the check-in process much clearer.

Jennifer Flowers and John Matchett were among the first to pick up tickets at 103 Orchard this morning. Jennifer is a frequent Tenement visitor who loves history. She says the Museum gives a "perfect flavor of New York", so with John in town from Virginia she suggested a visit. He said he'd read about the Museum and it "didn't take much convicing!"

Thanks so much to everyone on staff and of course our wonderful visitors, members and supporters for helping make this beautiful new home a reality. We hope you'll visit us soon!

Halloween History: Pumpkins, Costumes, and Future Husbands Revealed

2011-10-31T13:12:00.000-04:00

While Halloween has been celebrated in America since the days of colonial New England, the holiday didn't enjoy widespread popularity until the mid-to-late nineteenth century. As new waves of European immigrants began to arrive in the U.S., so did their traditions: Halloween disguises, pranks and trick-or-treating all have origins in Ireland and England.

American kids still expect costumes and candy on October 31st, but another more grown-up Halloween tradition has been forgotten. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, young women looked forward to annual romantic predictions on this day. As the New York Times described it in 1892, Halloween provided an opportunity to use "various devices for piercing the veil of futurity".

In 1929, the Times reported that "Many [Halloween] charms are still tried in the rural United States...a girl will go into the cellar backwards, carrying a candle, a mirror and an apple. While she combs her hair and eats the apple, the face of her future husband will appear beside her in the mirror"

Postcard c.1900-1909, Courtesy the NY Public Library

Though American women are more practical about finding husbands these days, this trick might be worth a try if Match.com fails you. Happy Halloween!

A Tenement Museum Playlist: the Lower East Side in Song

2011-10-28T10:44:00.001-04:00

The history, the food, the traffic, the people, the noise...it's no surprise that the Lower East Side has been inspiring music of every genre for decades. What other place on earth can count Rodgers and Hart and Joey Ramone among its admirers? For an audible trip through the neighborhood we love, check out our playlist and click the links to listen.

1929: Rodgers and Hart's "Manhattan" from the musical I'll Take Manhattan asks the unanswerable question, “...Tell me what street compares with Mott Street In July? Sweet pushcarts gently gli-ding by.”

1941: Hal Borne's "Tenement Symphony", performed by Tony Martin in the Marx Brothers film The Big Store, draws its decidedly schmaltzy inspiration from diverse, densely-packed tenements: "The Cohens and the Kellys/The Campbells and Vermicellis/All form a part of my tenement symphony".

1978: "I Just Wanna Have Something to Do" by the Ramones may not directly reference the Lower East Side, but we'd be remiss if we didn't mention one of the many iconic punk bands who got their start at CBGB, a legendary club on the Bowery. An added bonus: this is probably the only song in history to rhyme "Second Avenue" with "chicken vindaloo".

The Ramones on stage at CBGB

1987: “Delancey St.” by Dana Dane, from the album Dana Dane With Fame, was on the vanguard of hip hop's love affair with designer labels, referencing both Gucci and Louis Vuitton.

2005: "The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side" by The Magnetic Fields is a "beauty and the beast song, from the perspective of the beast," from the album 69 Love Songs

2006: The instrumental jazz piece “Lower East Side Rock Jam”, from Christian Mcbride's Live at Tonic album adds an impressionistic element to our list.

2010: “Orchard Street” by Thurston Moore can be found on his solo album Demolished Thoughts. Moore is best known as one of the founding members of Sonic Youth--another influential band that played at CBGB in its early days.

Thurston Moore performing with Sonic Youth

Who's Who at the Tenement: Meet the Collections Manager

2011-10-27T10:00:00.001-04:00

Collections Manager and Registrar Kathleen O’Hara is one of the newest additions to the Tenement team. Kathleen completed a Master’s in Museum Studies at George Washington University. She has worked at the National Archives and interned at Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, DC.

Most recently, she helped catalogue an impressive treasure trove at Museum Village in Orange County New York, which houses a collection of objects running the gamut from tractors and carriages to molding planes and archival documents.

Kathleen expertly creates order from chaos, cataloguing and identifying objects to determine their age, condition, and needs for preservation. With her diverse experience, Kathleen is well suited to work with the Tenement Museum’s collection, which includes everything from kitchen tools to clothing, wallpaper and furniture—and even a few snacks.

Working behind the scenes, Kathleen cares for the Museum's collection

So far, Kathleen has devoted most of her time to the biggest and most important object in our collection: the Tenement at 97 Orchard Street. She treats the building just as she does smaller objects, gauging its health and vitality and keeping track of its changes.

Currently, Kathleen's working on environmental monitoring to track the changing temperatures and humidity levels inside the building, which have a huge impact on its structural integrity. She'll also be monitoring traffic, both the trucks going by on Delancey Street, and the feet going up the stairs at 97 Orchard. Whether it’s human or mechanical, all traffic creates vibrations that affect the building’s health. By measuring the impact of these environmental factors, Kathleen can determine how to keep the building healthy for many years (and many thousands of visitors) to come.

Our New Face on Delancey Street

2011-10-26T14:20:00.000-04:00

Things are busier than ever at the Tenement Museum this fall, so we're dressing up for company: early Monday morning, we put a finishing touch on our new Visitor Center at 103 Orchard Street.

This painted Tenement Museum logo is even legible from the windows of cabs rushing by on Delancey, which should help visitors find their way to us much more easily. It's the icing on the cake for our beautiful new home!

Dated Dialect: Cowboy Style

2011-10-18T13:27:00.000-04:00

We're venturing far afield from New York, all the way to the Wild West for this installment of "Dated Dialect" from the 19th century.

"I'm going to tell that blatherskite (blowhard) to go boil his shirt (take a hike). He's all beer and skittles (unpleasant) and it's making me all-overish (uncomfortable). "

Oklahoma Cowboys c.1905; Image Courtesy Library of Congress

There may not have been many cowboys in the tenements of the Lower East Side, but these colorful characters were icons of popular culture during the heyday of 97 Orchard Street. In 1886, Buffalo Bill's Wild West show opened at Madison Square Garden, capturing the imaginations of New Yorkers with trick riders and sharp-shooters.

Buffalo Bill c.1870; Image Courtesy Library of Congress

Thanks to the Legends of America for its extensive online dictionary of antiquated slang!

Meeting Bridget Moore

2011-10-17T10:34:00.000-04:00

Emily Gallagher as Bridget Moore

On October 24, we'll launch "Meet Bridget" an exciting new program for school groups. On this tour, students will talk with a costumed interpreter portraying Bridget Moore, an Irish immigrant who lived at 97 Orchard Street with her family in the 1860's. If you've taken our tour about the Moore family, you know a bit about Bridget's life already. Here, Educator Emily Gallagher answers a few questions from Bridget's perspective.

You were only 17 when you immigrated to the United States from Ireland. Were you frightened? What were your first impressions of New York City?

I was quite troubled to leave Ireland. I feel my heart could have broken for thinking of my family on that ship and in the early days in New York. Yet it was clear our situation was root, hog, or die.* Leaving for America was the only way I could spare my family the fortune that it might cost to find me a husband. I come from outside Dublin, where my family and I could barely care for ourselves. When I first arrived off the boat, I was so tired! Yet straightaway I headed to the intelligence office to look for a situation as a domestic. My first years in New York were lived out tired and lonesome in the back of a lady's home, where I learned to cook and clean and be on tap all night and day if the missus needed anything, seven days a week.

Your apartment is so well kept! How do you keep it so clean, living in the city with three children?

It's much easier to keep a home in Kleindeutschland than it was in our previous home, in Five Points. In Five Points our tenement was dilapidated and overcrowded, making it near impossible to be tidy. Here at 97 Orchard Street, Joseph (my husband) and I are feeling blessed to live alone with just our family, in a new and sturdy building. Still, it's quite an effort of sweeping and scrubbing, quite tiresome to haul water and coal up the central stairs with my daughters in tow. When I was a wee lass in Ireland, there was no climbing of stairs or coal dust to sweep, and the wee ones could run outside without risk. Here, Joseph and I are learning to keep our daughters close-- the city is full of dangers for them.

What does your husband do for a living? Was it hard for him to find work when he arrived here from Ireland?

I am quite blessed to have our Joseph, who works as a barkeep back in our old neighborhood. During the season when strong families come to holiday in the City, he also works as a waiter in a popular restaurant. He arrived in New York from Dublin, able to read and write, and was determined to work in a pub. Many of the situations he wanted specified "No Irish" in their want ads, so he had to rely on the community to help him find his position. He is a charming one, and good looking, so eventually a bar owner wanted him to be a part of his business. His situation is quite enviable, he makes a decent wage and works indoors and can eat from the larder there, so I understand that we must do whatever he is asked to keep his relations with his employer. It saddens me that we get so little time together, but I am glad to be the wife of someone of such importance.

I see you have some ingredients for dinner here on the table. What kinds of foods do you and your family eat?

While I'm pleased to live in this new building, it has stretched our budget quite thin. When I worked as a domestic I learned to cook many fine dishes, but because of our expenses here what I can provide for my daughters and Joseph is quite meager. Sometimes Joseph brings me a loaf of bread from the pub, which is a nice treat since we can't quite bake it in these cast iron stoves. Tonight I am making a stew with a tiny bit of meat I got from a pushcart, carrots and potatoes. We'll drink whatever Joseph brings home in the growler this evening, except for our wee one Agnes, who will drink the milk I purchased from a pushcart this afternoon. Sometimes she fusses so when I feed her, I can't understand it.

*(1860s phrase meaning to be self-reliant, see here)

Victoria's Big Day Out!

2011-10-12T12:42:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, Tenement Educator Elly Berke took our Confino tour on the road, all the way to the East Village, where she performed at the "Between the Seas" festival. Elly usually portrays the teenaged Victoria Confino at 97 Orchard Street, teaching visitors about life for a Greek Immigrant girl in 1916.

Elly wrote and performed this spirited off-site version, nicely capturing Victoria's excitement and vivid imagination. For a snapshot of her performance via YouTube, check out the video below:

Searching for History Online

2011-10-05T12:37:00.002-04:00

A Census Taker at Work in 1890

Visitors often ask how we know so much about the families who lived at 97 Orchard Street. It's a great question! If you've ever done genealogical research about your own family history, you know that there's a surprising amount of information on public record. The United States Census is of course an important resource for learning about population density, employment, and the ages and nationalities of specific families.

The first United States Census was taken in 1790. Before the contemporary practice of submitting census forms by mail, enumerators (or census takers) went door to door visiting families and collecting data.

Tenement Museum researchers draw information from a variety of resources: oral histories, libraries, and of course, the internet. Some of these resources are surprisingly accessible. Ancestry.com is an online resource for genealogy with a massive number of documents, newspaper clippings, and even photographs available to the public. We recently found an 1880 census record for the Gumpertz family on this site. This is an interesting snapshot of the family during the time they lived 97 Orchard Street.

An 1880 Census

If you've taken our "Getting By" tour, you know that Nathalie Gumpertz raised her children alone after the dissapearance of her husband Julius in 1874. While her husband wasn't declared legally dead until much later, Nathalie already refers to herself as a widow in this census.

Detail of the Gumpertz Family Information

You might notice something else amiss: Nathalie's daughters, Olga and Nannie, are listed as "Ulka" and "Nancy", and the family's last name is spelled as "Gumbertz". Between language barriers and chaotic environments, information was often lost (or mixed-up) in translation, particularly for early censuses. Nonetheless, it's still an interesting glimpse of the Gumpertz family--check out your own family's history online. You might be surprised at what you find!

Rosh Hashanah Memories

2011-09-29T11:31:00.000-04:00

This week marks the start of the Jewish New Year, or Rosh Hashanah, and the first of the High Holidays. In her memoir, Miriam's Kitchen, Elizabeth Ehrlich remembers her mother-in-law Miriam's dedication to the preservation of Jewish traditions, especially the celebration of this important day.

Miriam, a holocaust survivor, was born in Poland and ultimately immigrated to the United States. But for a time in her early twenties, she lived in Israel. Miriam had to adapt both her daily life and her religious traditions to life in this new--and very different--country.

Ehrlich writes, "[Miriam] remembers the struggle to keep the milk, when she had it, from spoiling in the heat. No refrigeration, and often no ice. Once in those early days...Miraim and her mother prepared the holiday fare. They improvised menus known back in Poland with scant Israeli ingredients. Miriam made noodle sheets with an egg from her backyard hen-house, kneading and rolling and cutting the silken dough on a wooden board. She had a fowl slaughtered, and this became soup and a filling for kreplekh, dumplings; she baked a savory pudding and a sweet dessert. And then the mercury rose."

Worried that her holiday feast would spoil, she sent her husband to find ice. Off he went on his bicycle, and finally found some three towns away. Miriam improvised a cooler by putting the ice into a basin and stacking containers of food on top.

"And then the neighbors started to come," she remembered. "The whole street had heard of Jacob's coup and all shared Miriam's predicament. 'Each one brought something. Everything went into that basin.' she shrugged, 'We were neighbors. at the very end one family brought borsht--beet soup. They put the bottle on top...when i went back later to get my food, the bottle had turned over, and there was borsht on everything, all over. Everywhere'".

Many Rosh Hashanah meals were prepared at 97 Orchard Street over the years. No doubt Miriam's adaptation to scarcity in new surroundings, as well as her generosity with neighbors (despite the inconvenience) would have sounded very familiar to the many families who made their homes in our Tenement.

Shanah Tovah, Happy New Year!

A Tribute to the Rowdy Irish Musicals of Ned Harrigan & Tony Hart

2011-09-26T10:00:00.010-04:00

Here at the Tenement Museum, we talk a lot about the day-to-day difficulties of life in a 19th century tenement. But even the poorest New York City dwellers sought entertainment when they could. Before movies, television, and even radio, theatergoers flocked to see performers like the famed Irish American actor and playwright Ned Harrigan and his partner Tony Hart, who kept their audiences in stitches with their vaudeville routines.

On October 13, the Irish Art Center will present a tribute to Harrigan & Hart at Symphony Space in New York --a rare chance to enjoy the hilarious energy of these early icons of musical comedy.

Tony Hart and Ned Harrigan in "The Little Frauds"

The duo was known for finding humor in the everyday experiences of working class citizens, bringing some much-needed levity to communities struggling to stay afloat in tough circumstances. In "Squatter Sovereignity" a New York City shantytown (home to many Irish immigrants) was the setting for a raucous musical comedy about a broken engagement and the resulting family battle.

Click here to get tickets for the upcoming tribute to Harrigan & Hart featuring Irish musician Mick Moloney and others. We think these songs and stories have weathered the last hundred years quite nicely--and who says a history lesson can't be funny?

So Much to Celebrate at 103 Orchard Street!

2011-09-21T15:35:00.002-04:00

After a year and a half of construction and many more years of planning, we were absolutely thrilled to host our first event at the Sadie Samuelson Levy Immigrant Heritage Center yesterday. Local elected officials, staff and friends of the museum gathered to celebrate a major milestone as we inaugurated the building with a naturalization ceremony for 18 New Yorkers from 16 different nations.

New citizen Istvan Becze with his son; Photo by Mario Tama, Getty Images

The ceremony was officiated by Judge Robert A. Katzmann, who is the son of a refugee from Nazi Germany and the grandson of immigrants from Russia.

District Director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Andrea J. Quarantillo acted as M.C. As she recited the list of nationalities represented in the group (from Ecuador and India to Italy and China), she remarked "16 Nations! That's America, but that's also New York!" Indeed, it was a wonderful "only in New York" moment.

New citizens pose with their certificates

Swedish-born Jonas Malmsten (second from left) with his girlfriend Delethia Ridley and friends Alice Tan Ridley Sidibe and Sean Ridley

We were joined by New York State Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin, City Council Member Margaret Chin and Controller John Liu, as well as many other supporters and friends who helped make our new Visitor and Education Center a reality.

When the Center opens to the public next month, we'll have an amazing array of new offerings including a new original film about the Museum, an exhibition of photographs by Harvey Wang, a demonstration kitchen and state-of-the-art classrooms. We hope you'll visit our new home soon!

Tenement Museum President Morris Vogel with Museum Founder Ruth Abram

Tenement staff members celebrate

Dated Dialect: The Forgotten Slang of Centuries Past

2011-09-12T10:00:00.012-04:00

As we sometimes discuss on our tours, Orchard Street wasn't always as tidy as it is today. In the late 19th century, New York was known as one of the dirtiest cities in the world, with refuse and horse dung piling up on the streets. Back then, folks had a flamboyant term for the resulting stench--"kennetseeno"--a multisyllabic synonym for "stinky". This was primarily a British term, but the population--and as a result, the language--of New York has always been diverse.

In 1896, New York got its first official santitation system, and things began to smell a little sweeter. But some things never change. Just this summer, New York Magazine declared one of our neighboring blocks to be the stinkiest in the city. But don't be put off--the city's not nearly as "kennetseeno" as it used to be!

Phew--You can bet this was kennetseeno!

Dated Dialect: The Forgotten Slang of Centuries Past

2011-09-05T10:00:00.006-04:00

In the early days of 97 Orchard Street, folks had whole vocabularies of venerable vernacular which are totally unfamiliar to us today. For instance, what on earth does this one mean? "That's a huckleberry above my persimmon". Here's a hint: it has nothing to do with fruit salad.

This saying once meant something like "That's a bit out of my league (or beyond my ability)." Conversely, to say "I'm your huckleberry" meant "I'm the right man for the job."

If you love tales of the old American West, you might find this one familiar--it's commonly associated with the legendary 19th century gambler, gunfighter and dentist Doc Holliday, who was portrayed by Val Kilmer in the 1993 film Tombstone, and again by Dennis Quaid in 1994's Wyatt Earp.

Doc Holliday--He's your huckleberry.

And the Artifact is...

2011-08-31T11:49:00.000-04:00

On Friday, we asked if you could identify this artifact. While no one was able to name the object, many of you correctly determined that it was used in conjunction with textiles.

Photo property of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

And the artifact is...a rug hook! Using this artifact as leverage, a craftsperson would pull loops of yarn or fabric through a stiff woven base, like burlap or linen. The end result is truly a work of art.

Dated Dialect: The Forgotten Slang of Centuries Past

2011-08-30T11:08:00.001-04:00

We've recently learned a few great bits of archaic slang which might have been familiar to the 19th century residents of 97 Orchard Street. Is that a Maltooler (pickpocket) smatter hauling (stealing handkerchiefs)? He'd better watch out for the crushers (police)!

Image Courtesy of the New York Public Library

Guess the Artifact: Shop Life Edition

2011-08-26T10:27:00.000-04:00

Time for another exciting round of guess the artifact! This particular object is a contoured wooden handle with metal tip. There is a small hole at the end of metal tip. It is 13 cm in length.

Photo property of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

Happy guessing! Check back on Monday for the answer...

Victoria Confino Onstage at Between the Seas

2011-08-24T14:25:00.001-04:00

One of the most popular tours here at the Museum is our Confino Family Program, which introduces visitors to a family of Greek Sephardic immigrants who lived at 97 Orchard Street in the early 20th Century. On Saturday, September 3rd, Educator Elly Berke will take this program outside the Tenement with a presentation at Between the Seas, a festival of Mediterranean culture taking place here in New York City at the Wild Project.

Educator Elly Berke as Victoria Confino; Image Courtesy Crain's New York

The Confino program features 14-year-old Victoria Confino (as portrayed by one of our Museum educators), who introduces curious guests to her family's home, discussing their language, religion, favorite foods and family history. With grace and good humor, Victoria fields questions from inquisitive visitors of all ages as they explore her apartment.

The Confino Family Kitchen

For her performance at the Between the Seas festival, Educator Elly Berke has developed a new off-site interpretation of the program. She'll be portraying Victoria and sharing adapted versions of the stories our visitors hear when they visit 97 Orchard. Elly's terrific creativity and energy are sure to make this performance a memorable one. We hope you'll join us on the 3rd, but if you can't, remember the Confino program is also among our regular tour offerings!

And the Artifact is...

2011-08-22T12:18:00.001-04:00

On Friday, we asked you if you could identify this artifact. It's tough to stump our brilliant readers,

but this one was particularly confusing. We had several great guesses, but no one hit on the correct answer.

This mystery object is...a cigar holder! It would have been used in John Schneider's Saloon to display an array of cigars to patrons. Perhaps John would have kept it in the back room, where preferred patrons, guests, and community leaders would have gathered to discuss neighborhood politics and issues.

Guess the Artifact: Shop Life Edition

2011-08-19T13:37:00.000-04:00

As you might have heard, Museum staff are hard at work developing a new exhibit for the storefront at 97 Orchard Street, "Shop Life." We've already shown you some of the artifacts that we'll use to interpret these immigrant stories, but as we get closer to the opening of "Shop Life," we thought we would give you a peek at some of the other fascinating objects that we're gathering.

So, can you guess what this intriguing object is?

17 cm high and 9 cm in diameter, this mystery artifact is stamped metal, possibly brass, with nails placed in a circular pattern, four at the top and eight on the body.

What could it be? (Hint: this object will be used to help interpret John Schneider's Saloon). Leave your guesses in the comment section and check back on Monday for the mystery reveal!

New Season, New Talks!

2011-08-16T13:34:00.004-04:00

London, New Zealand, Mexico...Tenessee, Louisiana, California...we're lucky to welcome visitors from across the U.S. and the world here at the Tenement Museum. But of course we have a special fondness for our fellow New Yorkers, and we love the mix of locals and tourists who attend our free evening Tenement Talks series.

Like the city we call home, Tenement Talks are full of surprises: topics range from politics to cuisine, architecture, history and beyond. Curious locals and tourists alike gather in our Visitor Center for after-work drinks and a spirited conversation with some of today's most interesting writers and thinkers. Next month, our Talks return from a summer hiatus with a terrific fall lineup.

To launch our new season on September 7, we'll feature author Anna Solomon discussing her new book The Little Bride, the tale of a young Jewish mail-order bride who travels from Odessa to start a new life in 19th century South Dakota. We'll also enjoy the music of Tenement Museum Educator and musician Clare Burson, whose 2010 album Silver and Ash received rave reviews.

On September 8, we're thrilled to welcome actor, comedian and Obie-award-winning playwright Wallace Shawn. Shawn's diverse film career has included My Dinner with Andre, Toy Story, The Princess Bride and an unforgettable cameo in Woody Allen's Manhattan. Shawn will discuss his life and work and read from a selection of his essays.

Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory in My Dinner with Andre

On September 14 we'll round out an amazing week with author Julie Salamon reading from her book Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein. Pulitzer Prize-winner, Broadway titan and the first woman playwright to win a Tony Award, Wasserstein spoke to a generation of women during an era of vast change.

In the season ahead, we'll collaborate with independent non-profit newsroom Pro Publica for a series of talks on current events. We'll also talk with writer and humorist Calvin Trillin, biographer Vivian Gornick and feminist historian Jean H. Baker, among many others.

With an amazing array of guests and topics, this fall's Tenement Talks are some of our most exciting events yet! Whether you're a visitor or a New Yorker, we hope you'll join us for a drink and a chat.

Meet the Neighbors: Mastihashop

2011-08-09T16:30:00.000-04:00

August has arrived, and with it, quieter streets--making it the perfect time to explore the Lower East Side. Today, we'd like to introduce you to our new favorite local Greek establishment, the Mastihashop.

Photo courtesy New York Magazine

Located at 145 Orchard Street, Mastihashop gets is name from a little-known resin, Mastiha. Derived from the trunks of evergreen Mediterranean schinos trees, mastiha is only grown on the Greek island of Chios. Famous for its therapeutic properties, mastiha can be incorporated into all sorts of goods--pasta, extra virgin olive oil, face cream, shower gel, toothpaste, and soap.

According to Kitchen Caravan, "Mastiha has been used since ancient times for both its flavor as a spice, as well as for its therapeutic properties. It is an antibacterial, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory, and has long been lauded for its beneficial use in skin care, oral hygiene, and for curing digestive disorders. [It has] a refreshingly alpine, and slightly camphoric aroma."

Mastiha--for the curious reader

After years of preparation, Mastihashop was opened in 2007 by sisters Artemis and Kalliopi Kohas, who were born to Greek immigrant parents in Allentown, PA. According to their web site, the sister aspire to create "a meeting place that will host products and flavors from many civilizations of the Eastern Meditteranean."

If you visit the shop, make sure to check out the tasting corner, where visitors can sample Turkish delight, gum, and sweet mastiha paste--another exciting (and unusual) flavor of the Lower East Side!

--Posted by Kathryn Barnard

Meet the Neighbors: Angel Orensanz Center

2011-08-02T13:04:00.001-04:00

In 1986, Angel Orensanz, a world-renowned artist, took a night-time stroll through the Lower East Side with one goal in mind: finding the perfect space for a sculpture studio. What he found was a dilapidated building at 172 Norfolk Street in desperate need of repairs.

After evicting the pigeons, clearing the snow, securing the floors and adding electricity, Orensanz opened the space in the late spring. Since that day, more than 1 million people have visited the Angel Oresanz Center—to hear concerts, attend services, see exhibitions, participate in weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs and all kinds of lectures, community events and holidays. But its popularity is not the only reason why we think the Angel Orensanz Center is a great neighbor.

Exterior of Angel Orensanz Center. Photo courtesy Angel Orensanz Foundation.

Like most of the structures on the Lower East Side, the Center has a rich history. Built in 1849, a group of German Jews known as Anshe Chesed (The People of Living Kindness) hired German architect Alexander Saeltzer to build what would be the first synagogue in the U.S. to embody the tenets of Reform Judaism: the pulpit facing the congregation; the prominent use of organ and other instrumental music; and the use of German. Much like other buildings in Berlin, the ceilings were deep blue with gold stars. A balcony surrounded the main space and two spires rose dramatically in the front.

However, from the 1880s to the end of World War One, the synagogue suffered—it was passed from congregation to congregation, and was closed for much of the time. The gold stars went missing and the German splendor faded away. Orthodox congregations moved the pulpit to face East, women were relegated to the balcony, and the organ was removed (it is now at a summer camp in upstate New York). The spires at the front were removed and services returned to the traditional length, with Hebrew as the only spoken language.

In the years during and after World War Two, the neighborhood changed and many members of the Jewish community began to leave the Lower East Side, resulting in the closure of synagogues across the City. The synagogue on Norfolk Street closed in 1974. The City boarded up the windows and cinderblocked the doors, but that did not stop the building from being vandalized—gates were stolen; books, Torahs, pews, and the grand chandelier in the center space were broken or destroyed. At one point in the 1980s, the City of New York intended to demolish the building, erasing its heritage in the community.

Norfolk Street Synagogue, circa 1975. Photo courtesy Angel Orensanz Foundation.

But on that February day in 1986, Angel Orensanz had bigger plans for the space. Now home to the Angel Orensanz Foundation, the building has event and exhibition space, a free museum, which houses the permanent collection of Angel Orensanz’s work, as well as a large archive which is open to the public. The space now serves as an artistic and cultural resource open to artists, writers, thinkers and leaders from across the globe, and to the community.

Angel Orensanz Center. Photo courtesy Angel Orensanz Foundation.

--Posted by Kathryn Barnard

Thoughts from a New Educator

2011-07-27T12:39:00.000-04:00

Recently, the Museum has welcomed several new Educators to the team. Below, Educator Ana Estrades shares her thoughts and experiences as a newcomer to the U.S. and to the Museum.

I am a new educator at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. We're a big team--there's around 40 of us. I am not the only non-native, but I'm the only one from Spain. Nothing so special about that, it just explains my origin and also that I immigrated to the States.

In the Tenement we tell the stories of the immigrant families who lived in New York at the turn of the 20th century. In fact, this diverse neighborhood is still home to many immigrants. Of course, many feel that lifestyles and welfare have changed a lot in the past century, so newcomers should find life a lot easier compared to the expreiences of immigrants in the 19th century, right?

However, we know that nowadays many immigrants struggle to find their way in the U.S. Their challenges are both similar to and different from those of the historical tenants of 97 Orchard Street. To fulfill the museum’s mission of tolerance and my own mission as an educator, I ask myself: How can we connect the stories of immigrants in the past to those of the present?

Educator Ana Estrades on Orchard Street

The Tenement Museum and the objects it contains help to explain the city and the country’s history, as well as the histories and everyday lives of ordinary people, like you and me. These stories aren't written by heroes, nor by wealthy and powerful men. They don't even share the common heritage of a single ethnic group. And yet when we learn about immigrants from different nationalities-Irish, German, Russian or Chinese- we often exclaim “I know that feeling!” Though we face obstacles and challenges in different ways, we share common fears and expectations when we face big changes, like adapting to a new city, country, work and environment.

These diverse life histories are incredibly enriching, leading me to an answer for my above question--it is through personal stories that we can build bridges to the distant past. When I face a group of visitors, I leave space for their stories too, because it is the best way I know to build those connections between what we explain in the museum and their own backgrounds and lives.

--Posted by Educator Ana Estrades

Meet the Neighbors: Worship and Washing Up at 133 Allen Street

2011-07-22T13:04:00.002-04:00

With the temperature approaching 100 degrees again today, Orchard Street is sweaty--and slightly smelly. At the Museum, the "Eau de Summer" helps us describe what life was like for immigrants living in tenements with no air conditioning or plumbing and overcrowded rooms and streets. It paints a vivid sensory picture.

In the era before air conditioning, deodorant and Febreeze, the scent of the city (and its residents) was even more intense when temperatures rose. Through charity organizations and subsequent government intervention, urban reformers promoted the construction of public bathhouses in the City’s tenement neighborhoods, as both a public health measure and an attempt to assimilate immigrant populations to middle-class American norms.

So we'd like to introduce you to one of our lesser-known neighbors, the [former] Municipal Bath House at 133 Allen Street. Opened on November 23, 1905, it was just one of fifteen similar establishements in New York City offering free bathing facilities to those who did not have access to such amenities—mostly immigrants.

Image Property of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

Before public bathhouses, baths were hard to come by. Children could be bathed in sinks, but adults had to either pay a fee to use private, Russian, or Turkish baths, or make use of the Jewish mikvehs (bathing facilities for use in purification rituals) that dotted the Lower East Side. Between 1870 and 1888, the City erected 20 free floating baths over the Hudson and East rivers, but the water was heavily polluted and not suitable for bathing.

Patrons wait in line at the Milbank Memorial Baths, New York City, 1904

Reformers believed that the bath could help immigrants assimilate to “American” ways and free them of their uncivilized foreign habits. The Sun advertized the bath’s ability to “transform . . . some of these grimy Anarchists, and some of these Poles, Russians, and Italians into good Americans,” and asked, “how can we expect to make patriotic citizens out of individuals to whom so much of their native land still clings, unless methods are provided for ridding them of these foreign reminiscences?” (March 31, 1891).

York & Sawyer, the architects of the Municipal Bath House on Allen Street, as well as other public bathhouses, took this philosophy seriously. With large arched windows in the waiting room and glass skylights punctuating the roof, York & Sawyer bathhouses were designed to maximize sunlight—a rare building strategy in the slums—to help uplift the bather morally and hygienically.

With the advent of the New Tenement Laws, private bathrooms were included in tenement buildings. By the 1920s, the City’s bathhouses were sites of social recreation—described as “almost as much of a summer resort as Coney Island” (Bertram Reinitz, March 21, 1926).

The Municipal Bath House on Allen Street closed in 1975 due to the City’s financial crisis, but 133 Allen continues to serve immigrant communities. Today it is home to the Church of Grace to Fujianese, which is mostly attended by immigrants from the Fujian Province on the southeast coast of China.

The Church of Grace to Fujianese. Photograph by Robert K. Chin

Established in 1988, the Church of Grace to Fujianese moved to 133 Allen in 1992. As new waves of Fujianese have arrived, the Church has grown exponentially, opening a second location on 6th Avenue in New York, as well as one in Philadelphia. In an effort to reach an even broader constituency, the Church holds services via conference call for Chinese immigrants throughout the U.S. The program was the subject of a 2006 story in the New York Times.

Though its purpose has changed dramatically, the elaborate facade of 133 Allen Street remains intact, including water-themed ornamentation left over from its former life. The layers of history and evolving uses of this building make it a great example of why the Lower East Side is an amazing place to visit--there are surprising stories on every block!

--Posted by Kathryn Barnard

The New Center at 103 Orchard Makes Room for Our Youngest Visitors

2011-07-14T11:20:00.000-04:00

What’s the best way to make a child really, really antsy? We know: Put them outside a store with toys and a bowl of free candy but bar them entry. Watch as the children press up against the store’s windows, licking their lips and hopping up and down on one foot.

This, alas, has been the state of affairs at the Tenement Museum for years. Our Visitors’ Center is too small and crowded for much more than staff and visitors on our public tours. All those school groups we cater to throughout the year have to wait outside, no matter what the weather.

This is why we’re so excited about the opening of our new Visitors and Education Center at 103 Orchard Street! Now schoolchildren get treated with the respect they deserve. They have their own private entrance leading up to the second floor, where they’ll sit in climate-controlled comfort before heading to their tours.

Schoolkids visit the Baldizzi apartment

And down in the basement level: bathrooms. Lots of bathrooms. Enough to satisfy a stadium full of drunk football fans. (Well, maybe not, but still – it’s a lot more than we use to have!) These facilities aren’t the most glamorous aspect of our new home, but they’re awfully important when you’re a third grade teacher presiding over twenty kids who polished off their juice boxes on the bus.

But wait, there’s more! The second floor isn’t a waiting room for kids – it’s a home for our three modern “smart” classrooms. Here the kids can study maps and primary resources projected onto a screen. The classrooms even have Internet access, allowing us to quickly update our activities with the newest research and draw parallels to current events.

We never forget our educational mission, or the needs of the thousands of children who visit us every year. And now, thanks to 103 Orchard Street, we can engage their minds and take care of their basic needs. We’re thrilled – and we know the schoolchildren will be thrilled, too.

Meet the Neighbors: Cake Shop

2011-07-12T10:49:00.000-04:00

Summer is in full swing on the Lower East Side. Students are out of school (or enduring summer school) and people are exploring the neighborhood and the Museum with family and friends. So, as you get to know the community (or reacquaint yourself with old friends) allow us to introduce you to another one of our neighbors, Cake Shop.

Located at 152 Ludlow Street between Rivington and Stanton, Cake Shop is a theatrical, literary and music venue that also offers a café, bar, and a full line of vegan desserts—we’ve heard the Peanut Butter Bomb is out of this world. And because the café is open until 2 a.m., patrons can enjoy delicious baked treats well into the night.

But cake isn't the only great reason to visit Cake Shop. From spoken word to film screenings and eclectic musical performances, Cake Shop offers an events calendar with something for everyone. Featured bands tend to be new wave, hardcore, art-rock, metal and punk. Many are locals from the five boroughs, but this venue also brings in new and established talents from across the country and the globe. You never know, your random Friday night entertainment might be the next big thing (just ask Vampire Weekend).

Vampire Weekend Performing at Cake Shop

Image Courtesy the Village Voice

As one of the city's premier independent music venues for new and breaking talent, this Lower East Side institution is definitely worth a visit. And don’t forget to let us know what you think about the Peanut Butter Bomb.

--Posted by Kathryn Barnard

Scofflaws and "Scarfs": a Sign of the Past at 103 Orchard

2011-07-06T11:24:00.000-04:00

While most of the Tenement Museum’s soon-to-open Visitor and Education Center at 103 Orchard Street will look and feel brand new, traces of its former, historic incarnations remain and will be visible throughout the space.

For example, we discovered a hand-painted, vertical sign that covers the northern-side of one of the building’s steel support beams during demolition in April of last year. The sign speaks to the presence of generations of shopkeepers who sold a vast variety of goods from the storefront space that will soon house the new Center.

The “scarfs” and handkerchiefs advertised here were once sold by Zwaifler and Co. Handkerchiefs, a manufacturer and wholesaler who occupied the southern storefront of the building between 1920 and 1956. Its proprietor was Morris Zwaifler, a Romanian Jewish immigrant who had arrived in New York in 1900 and settled on Lower East Side. By 1930, the Zwaifler family had moved to Brooklyn, and his second daughter, Minnie, appears to have been employed as the bookkeeper for the family business.

Mid-1930s Photo of M. Zwaifler & Co Handkerchiefs. Collection of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

According to the New York Times, in May of 1944 the federal Office of Price Administration (OPA) fined M. Zwaifler and Co. nearly $10,000 for charging its customers more that the ceiling price it had set for handkerchiefs. Established at the onset of World War II by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the OPA was tasked with both rationing and setting price limits for goods made scarce by the war. But Zwaifler was not alone: oral history interviews conducted by Museum researchers have indicated that many Lower East Side businesses survived the war by selling goods that were restricted in some way.

Excerpt from the New York Times

Zwaifler's handkerchief sign will remain as we found it in the new Center, reminding us of the building's long and interesting history. We'll continue to uncover more of its stories in the months and years to come.

--Posted by David Favaloro, Director of Curatorial Affairs

Meet the Neighbors: Landmark's Sunshine Cinema

2011-06-28T13:55:00.000-04:00

Our "Meet the Neighbors" series continues this week with an introduction to Landmark’s Sunshine Cinema, which has a surprising history.

The Sunshine Theater c.1930
Image Courtesy the NY Public Library

Located at East Houston and Forsyth Streets, Sunshine Cinema has been a much-loved venue for independent and foreign films for ten years. What's surprising is that the building itself has actually been a neighborhood gathering place since before the advent of cinema.

Originally built as a Dutch Reformed church in the 19th century, the building at 143 East Houston Street has had many lives. In 1908 it began a career in show biz when it was transformed into the Houston Hippodrome, a neighborhood vaudeville house featuring three-act plays, costume operettas and variety acts for local Yiddish-speaking audiences. Patrons purchased knishes from Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery down the block to snack on during a performance.

For Lower East Siders, Yiddish Theater was a cornerstone of neighborhood life. Jewish American singers like Sophie Tucker and Belle Baker were known as vaudeville's "Red Hot Mamas". They rose to stardom singing ragtime and torch songs like "My Yiddishe Mama" and Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies"--but it wasn't all 'schmaltz'. The red hot mamas also delivered risque and humorous numbers like "Nobody Loves a Fat Girl, But Oh How a Fat Girl Can Love," and "Last of the Red Hot Mamas".

Sophie Tucker c.1913

Belle Baker c.1916

Time marched on and vaudeville's heyday ended. For nearly half a century, the auditorium was used as warehouse space for Semel Goldman Hardware. For a time in the mid-1990s, it was rented out for sporadic independent rock concerts, before Landmark Theatres bought and renovated the building. On December 21, 2001, Landmark opened its modern, five-screen art house behind the Sunshine's classic façade.

Sunshine Cinema today

But the more things change, the more they stay the same: with the return of theater audiences, the Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery is once again selling their famous knishes to moviegoers. Pick one up the next time you head to the movies for a taste of the vaudeville era and the original Jewish Lower East Side!

From Subways to Ploughshares: a City Girl's Week on the Farm

2011-06-27T16:00:00.000-04:00

When I was accepted to present a paper on our Living History programs at the Association of Living History, Agricultural and Farms Museums (ALHFAM) conference in Westin, West Virginia, I had no idea that my agenda would include time with a plough blade as well as a PowerPoint.

On June 3rd, I stepped off the plane and into the one-gate airport in Morgantown where I was greeted by Sierra Kessler of Historic Richmond Town in Staten Island--my sole New York City compadre. We followed the winding roads over hilltops and through valleys, stopping briefly for the necessary we’re-out-of-New York City Cracker Barrel lunch, and eventually found ourselves on the grounds of Jackson’s Mill, childhood home to Andrew Stonewall Jackson and a current 4-H campground.

Sarah gears up for the competition

During my week in West Virginia, I found a new family among first-person living history interpreters from across the country, and even met some of the characters they portray. Together, we learned new storytelling and historic theater skills, sharing ideas on how to respond to visitors’ anachronistic comments without breaking character or making anyone feel bad. I was embraced by the community of living history professionals, some of whom have been portraying their characters and attending ALHFAM conferences for longer than I’ve been alive.

As the sole representative interpreting urban life in the twentieth century, there were times when I was severely out of my element. I learned more than I ever thought possible about historic arts and machinery. I spun yarn for the first time, and practiced using natural dyes. The highlight, however, was learning to plough with a team of horses--see the video below for proof! In the end, I'm proud to say that I earned my stripes as a plough girl, coming in 4th in the novice class of the annual plough match.

Sarah is coached on how to plough a straight furrow before her turn in the match.

Though I don’t see Victoria Confino or Bridget Moore teaching our visitors to plough any time soon, it was a wonderful experience to encounter a very different aspect of American history, and to meet so many amazing living historians.

--Posted by Education Associate Sarah Litvin

Attention Lovers of Trivia!

2011-06-27T07:00:00.005-04:00

Please direct further questions to events@tenement.org.

LGBT Immigrants and the Search for Home

2011-06-24T11:08:00.001-04:00

Marriage and family are central themes at the Tenement Museum, just as they are for immigrant communities at large. Finding a partner, having children and making a home help us feel sense of belonging in our communities--whether we're immigrants or native born citizens.

However, for immigrants who identify as LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender) questions of marriage and family tend to be more complicated. Since June is LGBT Pride Month, it's a perfect time to take a closer look at these issues.

As LGBT people have become more visible in the U.S., so have their struggles as immigrants. The most obvious of these is that without legal recognition of their partnerships, LGBT immigrants can't apply for citizenship through marriage. This was formalized by the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which denies all federal benefits, including spousal immigration preferences, to same-sex couples. Even couples who have been legally married at the state level are denied this benefit.

Bi-National couple Henry Velandia, left, and Josh Vandiver
Image Courtesy the New York Times

As the New York Times reported in March, married couples like Henry Velandia and Josh Vandiver are in legal limbo while immigration officials determine their fate. Velandia, a Venezuelan citizen, and Vandiver, an American, were married in Conneticut in 2010. Their application for a green card for Velandia was denied and he may be forced to leave the U.S. as a result.

On a related note, thousands of LGBT immigrants seek asylum in the United States every year for fear that they'll be persecuted in their countries of origin. In dozens of countries around the world including Iran, Pakistan and Uganda, homosexuality itself is a crime--in some cases, punishable by death.

In January of this year, Brenda Namiggade, a Ugandan woman, was granted asylum by the United Kingdom. Namiggade's case became more well known after the brutal murder of gay Ugandan activist David Kato. Just months before Kato's death, a local newspaper named him among 100 of “Uganda’s Top Homos,” advocating their murder. Kato's subsequent murder has been cited as proof that Namiggade's life would be in danger if she were to return to Uganda.

Ugandan Brenda Namiggade was granted asylum by the U.K. in January 2011

The legal status of LGBT people is changing rapidly, however. Just one week ago today the United Nations endorsed LGBT equality for the first time in the institution's history, passing a resolution supporting equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation. As part of this resolution, a report will be commissioned to explore the challenges that LGBT communities face around the globe.

While the families of 97 Orchard were incredibly diverse--coexisting in close quarters despite different languages, beliefs and cultures--their most pressing concerns were universal. LGBT immigrants share these same concerns today as they seek safe homes and families of their own.

To read more about these issues visit:
http://www.publicagenda.org/charts/countries-where-homosexuality-illegal
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/lgbt-rights
http://gaycenter.org/node/5270

Tickets Now On Sale for "Taste of the Lower East Side"

2011-06-21T12:21:00.000-04:00

Educator Adam Steinberg and group visit The Pickle Guys

Last month, we announced a scrumptious new walking tour interpreting the immigrant stories of the Lower East Side through food. The response has already been great--we've had messages and calls from several fans eager to try it.

Well, we're happy to announce that the wait is over: tickets are now available on our web site for the "Taste of the Lower East Side." This new tour will take place on Fridays and Saturdays only, beginning this Friday, June 24 at 1 p.m. general admission is $45 per person, $22 for Museum Members.

What can you expect from this two-hour walking and tasting tour? You'll visit a diverse group of local purveyors and restaurants, tasting Dominican cheeses, Italian cured meats, Chinese dumplings, Asian fusion cream puffs and more. The tour opens a fascinating dialogue about the origins of some of our favorite foods, revealing that even some of the most quintessentially American fare is the product of immigrant adaptation and invention. Check out these delicious images for more inspiration--we'll see you on the Lower East Side!

Kossar's Bialys--fresh from the oven!

Green tea cream puffs from Panade

Traditional soft pretzels get a dollop of spicy mustard

Vanessa's famous pork dumplings

Meet the Neighbors: Bluestockings

2011-06-21T09:56:00.000-04:00

The Lower East Side is one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in New York. Even those of us who walk through it every day are often surprised by new treasures, or old ones we've overlooked. It's a neighborhood of small businesses, where chain stores are the exception rather than the rule. Best of all, its abundant delights are generally accessible--from $5 lunches to $3 happy hours and free cultural events, there's a bargain around every corner.

Since a stroll through the LES yields so much, we're launching a new blog series called "Meet the Neighbors" which will profile restaurants, cultural institutions, shops, historic sites and anything else that makes the neighborhood unique. If you have topic suggestions, please share them in the comments section below!

To kick off the series, allow us to introduce you to Bluestockings, a bookstore, fair trade cafe and activist center. Whether you're familiar with Bluestockings or not, it definitely deserves a visit (or repeat visit). Located at 172 Allen Street, between Stanton and Rivington, Bluestockings sells over 6,000 titles on a variety of topics including: queer and gender studies, Black liberation, democracy studies and global capitalism.

Bluestockings also hosts events (most free of charge or small suggested donation), including performances, workshops, readings, and film screenings, all of which are listed on their events calendar. While you're there, sample the eats at their in-house cafe, which features organic, vegan and fair trade options.

Bluestockings strives to be a space that encourages and empowers all people. It makes a unique and important contribution to the neighborhood and the city at large--much like the immigrant communities that the Tenement Museum celebrates. Be sure to check back later for more introductions to our intriguing neighbors!

Celebrating Fathers

2011-06-17T10:59:00.000-04:00

June is a month for many things—the end of school and subsequent start of summer, weddings, and fathers. For this Father’s Day, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum would like to celebrate by highlighting one of the dads who lived at 97 Orchard Street, Adolfo Baldizzi.

Adolfo Baldizzi

Adolfo Baldizzi came to New York from Italy in 1923. His wife, Rosaria, soon followed. A cabinet maker, he came to America hoping to make it big in the land of opportunity. Adolfo lived at 97 Orchard Street with his family during the depression era. His daughter, Josephine, remembered her father finding odd jobs to support the family during difficult times—he fixed doors, windows, and made furniture. “He had hands of gold, he really was a very good worker,” she said.
When Adolfo wasn’t working to help provide for the family, he took his children, Josephine and Johnny, to the theater to see Flash Gordon, The Three Stooges and Charlie Chaplin films. Occasionally he would take them to a diner around the corner for a 5¢ root beer. Though he could not read, he taught his children how to play cards and helped Josephine with her math homework. He encouraged her to finish high school, though Rosaria wanted her to work to supplement the family income. Josephine did finish her education, and worked in an office for many years.

Even when there was very little money, Adolfo made sure that the apartment at 97 Orchard Street was cozy. For Christmas, he made a tree out of things people threw in the garbage, and fixed it to the wall. He used old cheese boxes as planters for morning glories to brighten the windows. He loved riddles, music, and Westerns. During a time of great economic hardship, he and Rosaria both worked to ensure that their family was taken care of, and that their children would have a promising future in America.

So this Father’s Day, don’t forget to call up your dad, grandfather, or father figure and let him know how much he means to you—thank him for the root beers, card games, and riddles.

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum would like to wish all fathers a very happy Father’s Day!

--Posted by Tenement Museum Intern Kathryn Barnard

A Building With a Past: the Many Lives of 103 Orchard

2011-06-14T14:03:00.004-04:00

If you’ve been following the construction of our new visitor and education center at 103 Orchard Street, then you know the interesting history of the building and some of its past tenants. It seems like everything in the Lower East Side has a back story, and 103 Orchard is no exception!

With this in mind, it comes as no surprise that the building has significantly changed over time, evolving from 3 independent old law tenement buildings positioned in the middle of the block into one corner building. Through it all, 103 Orchard Street has witnessed the ongoing transformation of the neighborhood for well over a century, through cycles of boom and bust, expansion and contraction.

What is now 103 Orchard was originally built in 1888 as 103, 105, and 107 Orchard Street. These buildings were located in the center of block, sandwiched between others on each side.

103, 105 and 107 Orchard circa 1888

When Delancey Street was widened in 1903 to create a larger thoroughfare for traffic to the new Williamsburg Bridge, 109, 111, and 113 Orchard Street were demolished, making 107 Orchard Street the corner building.

103, 105 and 107 Orchard circa 1903

The most significant change came between 1913 and 1916 when the front halves of 103, 105, and 107 Orchard Street were combined to create one tenement building. At the same time, the rear halves of all three were demolished, clearing space for a new building to house a branch of the Bank of the United States facing Delancey Street at the rear of the merged lots.

103, 105 and 107 Orchard circa 1913-1916

When Allen Street was widened between 1930 and 1934, the tenements on the other side of the bank were removed, exposing the side wall of the bank and effectively changing the entire neighborhood.

103, 105 and 107 Orchard circa 1930-1934

Once again, 103 Orchard Street is changing, and so is the neighborhood. In July the Tenement Museum’s new Visitor and Education Center will officially open to the public, representing the historical memory of 103 Orchard Street and the ongoing evolution that makes the Lower East Side such an exciting place to be.

A Rendering of the new Visitor Center at 103 Orchard

This Weekend on the LES: Eggrolls, Egg Creams, Badminton, Ping Pong and more...

2011-06-10T11:40:00.000-04:00

As summer begins and the temperatures rise, the Lower East Side is bubbling with activities you won't find anywhere else. This Sunday, June 12, the LES offers an only-in-New-York array of free activities to keep you well fed and entertained all day.

From 12 to 4pm, check out the annual Egg Rolls & Egg Creams festival hosted by the Eldridge St. Museum. Located in and around a restored 19th-century Jewish Synagogue in the heart of Chinatown, this one-of-a-kind event blends Chinese and Jewish food and culture. If you're interested in mah jongg, Chinese opera and acrobatics, crafts, synagogue tours, folk art, or language lessons, don't miss this cross-cultural block party.

Photo Courtesy Museum at Eldridge Street

Next, walk a couple blocks east to the Hester Street Fair. Established in 1895 as a pushcart market, the Hester Street Fair has evolved into a Lower East Side summer treasure combining food, crafts, and vintage goods. This Sunday they'll also host their first Summer Sunday Picnic with 20 food vendors, picnic tables, live music, badminton, ping pong and more. Open from 11:00-6:00 PM, check out Hester Street Fair's website for a full list of food vendors and activities.

Photo courtesy Hester Street Fair

Wonder City Coffee and Donut Bar
Photo Courtesy Hester Street Fair

Celebrating the Tenement Museum with Theater, Local Food and Friends

2011-06-09T17:23:00.001-04:00

On Monday night, 300 of the Tenement Museum’s friends and neighbors gathered in Chelsea for our 23rd anniversary gala, “Celebrating Iconic New York.” The event honored former Mayor Ed Koch and the Museum’s previous Board Chair, Raymond O’Keefe. Guests rode a freight elevator (which incidentally is about the size of one of the apartments at 97 Orchard Street) up to the event, where some of our favorite New York City restaurants and purveyors served everything from pickles to pastries.

From Left: Tenement Museum President Morris Vogel, former New York City Mayor and Gala Honoree Edward Koch, Tenement Museum Board Chair Paul Massey and former U.S. Senator Alphonse D'Amato

We were excited to sample treats from the Pickle Guys, Ma Peche, Panade, Hot Bread Kitchen, Tortilleria Nixtamal, Russ and Daughters and many more. Guests were also treated to a preview of the upcoming Liberty: A Monumental New Musical which tells the story of the Statue of Liberty and her struggle to find a place in America.

The Museum’s founder Ruth Abram remembered Former Mayor Ed Koch as an important supporter in the early days, during a time when many were afraid to visit Orchard Street. Tenement staffer Frances Pena also rose to the occasion, sharing stories about working with our former Board Chair Raymond O’Keefe.

Former New York City Mayor and Gala Honoree Edward Koch accepts his award.

Museum Staff Member Frances Pena poses with former Board Chair and Gala Honoree Raymond O'Keefe

While the gala is always a terrific party, it also raises crucial funds to support the museum. As a testament to their dedication, guests committed an extra $32,000 at the event to the Museum’s P.S. 97 program, which funds school group trips to the Museum. With this support, 4,000 more students will get to visit the Tenement Museum and explore the stories of the immigrants that called 97 Orchard Street home.
Thank you to all of the food vendors, museum staff, board members, and museum supporters that made “Celebrating Iconic New York” such a success!

Who is this girl?

2011-06-08T11:43:00.004-04:00

Recently, we received an email from the historians at the Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp. The Museum is currently under construction, and is slated to open in 2013. It's named for an ocean passenger line which brought more than two million European immigrants to the U.S. in the early 20th Century. The Museum will re-purpose Red Star's customs and passenger processing facilities, telling the stories of the many families who traveled through the site on their way to new lives in the U.S.

The Museum's historians are currently seeking the identity of a young immigrant girl in a photograph dating to about 1905. The young passenger holds a Red Star Line ticket in her hand.

Young Galician immigrant holding envelope labelled "Red Star Line"

Saint John, New Brunswick, May 1905

The photo is beautiful, intriguing, even a bit haunting, but very little is known about its origins. It hints at just one of the museum's many stories. Though it was taken in Canada, it's possible the passenger and her family went on to the U.S., like so many others. The Canadian archives identify her as Galician (of an ethnic group located in the north-west of Spain), but her precise origins are unknown.

Through social media and other online platforms, the museum hopes it can connect this girl to a larger story by identifying her family and tracing their lives to the city they ultimately settled in. As an incentive, the successful sleuth can win a trip for two to Antwerp! To participate, visit http://www.redstarline.org/.

Pox: An American History by Michael Willrich

2011-06-06T13:08:00.000-04:00

Late one evening in New York, vaccinators and policemen raided a tenement home in Little Italy, vaccinating everyone they could find with the smallpox vaccine. Michael Willrich stumbled upon this article, published in 1901, as he searched The New York Times archive with plans to write a book on the aftermath of September 11 and civil liberties. Instead, this 1901 New York Times article led Willrich on an exploration of the seldom-explored history of smallpox vaccinations and its impact on civil liberties at the turn of the twentieth century.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, a deadly smallpox epidemic spread throughout America. With advances and optimism in modern medicine, the government called for a universal compulsory vaccination. To enforce the law, health officials relied upon pesthouses, quarantines, and "virus squads." Virus squads often consisted of doctors and policemen with billy clubs. These governmental measures sparked a wave of resistance by Americans who felt a risk to both their health and to their civil liberties.

A professor of history at Brandeis University, Willrich examines the debates surrounding smallpox vaccination in the early twentieth century. He also poses questions that continue to be a concern in the contemporary public health field. Pox: An American History explores concerns and debates that affected Americans 100 years ago, and that continue to be relevant today.

Join Tenement Talks on Tuesday, June 7 at 6:30 PM to hear Michael Willrich discuss Pox: An American History. Please RSVP to events@tenement.org.

Snap! Click! A Peek into Snapshot: a Tenement Museum Photo Event

2011-06-03T15:48:00.001-04:00

When taking a tour of the Tenement Museum, one of the first rules the educator will tell you is "no photography, please!". On Wednesday, June 1, however, participants of our "Snapshot" event were allowed to take pictures of the interior of 97 Orchard Street, a very special opportunity. Here are pictures taken by staff members during the event.

Visitors take pictures inside the Ruin apartment

Participant takes pictures in the Levine apartment

A peek into the home of the Rogarshevsky's

"Back in the Days" Turns Ten at Tenement Talks

2011-05-27T10:28:00.000-04:00

Back in the Days, the volume of unforgettable images by Brooklyn photographer Jamel Shabazz, turns ten this year. Even if you've flipped through this book casually, you'll definitely remember Shabazz's vibrant, high energy portraits and street scenes taken in New York City during the early days of hip hop between 1980 and 1989.

To celebrate the book's anniversary, Shabazz will join us at Tenement Talks next Thursday, June second for a slide show and conversation about his now-classic collection of photography, which was recently re-released by powerHouse Books as Back in the Days Remix.

When Back in the Days debuted ten years ago, widespread nostalgia for the 1980's had just begun to set in, intensifying the book's appeal. Time continues to be kind to these images, however: the decade that's passed hasn't diminished their power. Back in the Days captures all the attitude and energy of a new American cultural movement while serving as a beautiful--and important--historical document.

From Back in the Days: Remix by Jamel Shabazz, published by powerHouse Books.

Snapshot is Back!

2011-05-26T12:31:00.000-04:00

If you've visited the Tenement Museum, you know that we don't usually allow photography at 97 Orchard Street. The one exception is our evening "Snapshot" event, which allows visitors to snap pictures to their hearts' content and enjoy gourmet treats from our neighbors at Il Laboratorio de Gelato. The next Snapshot is coming up next Wednesday June 1. Tickets are available on our web site here, and of course members get a discount!

Photographer Hung Le joined us for the last Snapshot event--below are some of the beautiful results.

For more information about Hung and his work, visit his web site.

Forgotten New York

2011-05-24T14:50:00.000-04:00

The Forgotten NY blog is a great place to read about the overlooked, lesser-known corners of our fair city. Below are a few excerpts from a post about the Lower East Side's Rivington Street, which reveals some of the neighborhood's gems. Click here to read the entire post.

The former Adath Jashurun synagogue built by immigrants from Iasi, Romania, designed in 1903 by famed architect Emery Roth. It has been a private home since 1973.

The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Educational Center Inc. is a Puerto Rican/Latino cultural institution that has demonstrated a broad-minded cultural vision and a collaborative philosophy. While CSV's mission is focused on the cultivation, presentation, and preservation of Puerto Rican and Latino culture, it is equally determined to operate in a multi-cultural and inclusive manner, housing and promoting artists and performance events that fully reflect the cultural diversity of the Lower East Side and the city as a whole.

ABC No Rio, a large artist's collective on Rivington Street, is well known for decades for political activism and its drive to be a community social center, combining art, music, poetry and intense activism on many political and economic issues affecting local residents. They have been one of the major centers for the performance of spoken word/poetry slams and host a regular weekend matinee show of indie punk thrash metal music, amongst many other activities...

Finally, 202 Rivington, the girlhood home of Genya Ravan, who has been rocking for over 40 years. Ravan founded Goldie & the Gingerbreads, the first all-girl rock band to be signed to a major label. Born in Poland in 1940, she is a Holcaust survivor who immigrated to the United States in 1949.

Thanks to Forgotten NY for allowing us to re-post!

Rainy-day Rugelach

2011-05-23T12:44:00.002-04:00

Here in New York, it looks like we're in for another damp, dreary day. Since it feels more like fall than spring, why not bake something delicious while waiting for the sun to return?

Below is a delicious recipe for rugalach, a traditional Jewish pastry, courtesy of Jane Ziegelman, author of 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement. Jane served these cookies at a recent Tenement Talks event--needless to say, they were a huge hit!

4 ½ cups all-purpose flour
¾ pounds butter
1 yeast cake or 2 ½ teaspoons instant yeast
3 egg yolks
½ cup milk
½ cup sour cream
1 lemon (juice and rind)
1 teaspoon salt
3-4 cups walnuts, chopped
½ cup yellow raisins, chopped
1/4 cup sugar
cinnamon to taste
apricot jam

Mix flour and butter thoroughly; add yeast which has been dissolved in 2 tablespoons warm milk; add egg yolks to the rest of the milk and add to the flour mixture. Now add the lemon juice and grated, sour cream and salt. This should be thoroughly blended until it forms a ball. Put in refrigerator over night.

Let dough come to room temperature. Combine walnuts, raisins, sugar and cinnamon. Set aside. Divide dough into four even pieces. Roll into a long narrow rectangle, ¼ inch thick. Spread lightly with apricot jam, then sprinkle evenly with nut mixture. Roll up, jelly roll style, brush with milk and sprinkle with sugar. Repeat with remaining ingredients. Bake 30 minutes in moderate oven (350 degrees) or until nicely browned. When cool, slice in diagonal slices.

--adapted from the Jewish Centinel Cook Book, 1936

Update from 103 Orchard: New Technology for Accessibility

2011-05-20T11:08:00.000-04:00

At the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, we’re accustomed to peeling back plaster and lath to inspect and date the pipes and wires we find inside. But this month, we’re the ones leaving clues for future urban archeologists.

Threading induction loops through the ceiling at 103 Orchard Street

In preparing our new Visitors Center at 103 Orchard Street, we’re adding all sorts of wires for new technologies. We’ll have “smart classrooms” on the second floor and a high-tech projector in our new cinema space. Most recently, we added several induction loops that will assist visitors who wear hearing aides.

Induction Loops are a technology that uses a loop—really a wire surrounding an area—to create a magnetic signal that hearing aid wearers can “pick up” wirelessly. This signal helps clear up the interference of a busy or crowded room such as our shop and Visitors Center by transmitting sound directly from an audio source to a person’s hearing aid by way of a telecoil or “t-coil” receiver.

In our current Visitors Center, we have induction loops installed at our ticketing and retail counters. In our new space, we will have a loop around the cinema where our film about Lower East Side history plays. A fourth loop will encircle the area where evening Tenement Talks are held. The system is complex, but its result is beautifully simple: vastly improved experiences for every visitor who uses a hearing aide.

At the Tenement Museum, we’re always looking for new ways to improve accessibility and open our ongoing dialogue to as many visitors as possible. To learn more about induction loops, and where else you can find them in New York, e-mail Sarah Litvin, our Education Associate in charge of Access.

Gathering Objects for "Shop Life": Part 2

2011-05-18T12:11:00.000-04:00

If you read our last post, you know that the Tenement team has been gathering objects for a new exhibit called "Shop Life" opening later this year. "Shop Life" will tell the stories of the businesses which have been located at 97 Orchard street over the years, starting with the Schneider family's German beer saloon which was in operation from 1864 to 1886.

After the team's field trip to the Brimfield Antique Show, Pamela Keech gathered the staff for a show-and-tell about the museum's new treasures.

The team found an array of domestic goods from the period, including textiles and an oil lamp.

John Schneider was a member of a fraternal society called the Oddfellows. Objects like these would have held symbolic significance for him.

The Schneiders served more than just beer at their saloon--they were also known for great lemonade. Here, Pamela demonstrates a lemon juicer from the time period.

"Shop Life" will also explore the family life of the Schneiders. Here's a German language prayer book from the period.

John Schneider was never without a black umbrella, like this one.

While looking at the objects, we discovered a monogram inscribed on the umbrella's handle, which is made from a beautifully textured branch.

"Shop Life" will also look at the use of the space in the twentieth century, all the way through the 1960's and 70's. The team also selected a 1930's microphone like the one used at the auction house once located at 97 Orchard, and some peace sign sunglasses from the pop art era.

Check back for more updates on "Shop Life" soon! As plans for the exhibit progress we'll have much more to share.

Gathering Objects for "Shop Life": Part 1

2011-05-17T10:24:00.000-04:00

On a cool Wednesday morning recently, five Tenement Museum staffers from various departments drove up to the world famous Brimfield, Massachusetts Antique Show to gather period furniture for our forthcoming exhibit, Shop Life, which will explore the histories of the various businesses that have been located at 97 Orchard Street over the years.

After chili cheese dogs and coffee, we met up with Pamela Keech, veteran curator and furnisher of the Tenement Museum apartments, who had already found the first of many tables that we would need to “schlep.” Tables like these would have been used in the saloon by the Schneider family, proprietors of Schneider's saloon. The saloon was in operation from 1864 to 1886.

Table number two doubles as a storage box like the one the Schneiders would have used for letting dough rise.

Also on our shopping list: the numerous artifacts needed to furnish the saloon and use as talking points. This interactive new exhibit will discuss all uses of the original commercial space, from the Schneiders' era through the 1970s.

Brimfield wasn’t all work, though. There were so many displays to be enjoyed for their sense of playfulness and nostalgia.

The next morning we (actually mostly just Pamela) found two more tables and most of the artifacts we needed. Well what did we end up finding, you ask? To be continued in Part 2!

--Posted by IT Coordinator Jonathan Lagdameo

Snacking our Way Through the Lower East Side

2011-05-09T15:03:00.001-04:00

How many times have you ventured into an immigrant neighborhood, or even into an immigrant-owned restaurant in your own neighborhood, looking for an authentic taste of a foreign cuisine? Just what are you eating? What makes a dish “immigrant”? What makes it “American”? These are just some of the questions we’ll be asking on the Tenement Museum’s new two-hour food walking tour of the Lower East Side.

Food is elemental. Next to air and water, nothing is more important to a person’s survival. And every civilization has been built on access to plentiful food. To understand a nation’s culture, you must understand its food – what people eat, why they eat it, and how they feel about what they eat.

Nowhere is this dynamic more obvious than here on the Lower East Side. With literally dozens of different nationalities sharing this neighborhood, you can find restaurants, shops, and markets selling foods from all over the world. Here you can find Chinese dumplings, Dominican fried plantains, Jewish pickles, and Italian cured meats all being sold cheek-by-jowl. People from all over the world come here to see the sights and especially eat these foods.

The Tenement Museum hasn’t really looked closely at this topic—until now. Starting in June, we’ll be offering a food-themed walking tour every Saturday and Sunday. We’ll serve you some of the neighborhood’s most popular foods from the past, and in the present day.

We’ll visit the Pickle Guys, the last of the old Jewish pickle merchants on the Lower East Side.

The author introduces the group to the much-loved Pickle Guys

We’ll walk through Essex Street Market, a haven for immigrants from all over the city looking for their favorite hard-to-find fruits and vegetables.

We’ll taste some of the candy from Economy Candy, a legendary, immigrant-owned candy store.

Chocolate covered pretzels from Economy Candy

We’ll compare Asian-fusion treats with traditional Chinese pork dumplings.

Green tea cream puffs from Panade Bakery

Pork dumplings from Vanessa's Dumplings

We’ll wrap up the tour with some traditional bialys, served inside our landmarked 1863 tenement at 97 Orchard Street.

But we’ll do more than snack. Throughout this tour, we’ll talk, as a group, about what food means to us. What’s your favorite childhood food memory? Under what circumstances would you go out to a Chinese restaurant as opposed to a French restaurant? And what’s the difference between a heaping plate of pasta served in an old Italian restaurant and a can of Chef Boyardee served at home (aside from the taste)?

By tour’s end, you’ll be full – but you’ll also have new insights into what food means to immigrants, what food means to Americans, and how seemingly exotic immigrant dishes eventually become part of the regular American diet. You’ll never think about what you eat the same way again.

--Posted by Tenement Museum Education Coordinator Adam Steinberg

Bathtime in a Tenement Kitchen

2011-05-09T13:01:00.000-04:00

Image Courtesy the New York Public Library

A Mother's Work

2011-05-06T12:01:00.000-04:00

During the second wave feminist movement of the 1960's and 70's, working mothers became cultural icons: strong, self-assured and ready to finally break glass ceilings in the workplace. These women were path breakers, but they weren't the first generation of working moms. The reality, of course, is that mothers have always held jobs, rejecting the customary role of the cloistered housewife by choice or necessity.

In late 19th century New York, 97 Orchard Street residents Nathalie Gumpertz and Jennie Levine were among thousands of working moms employed in the city’s garment industry. Their contemporaries also worked as teachers, manufacturers, servants, cooks, clerks, saleswomen, and in many other roles.

Women at work in a laundry circa 1905. Image courtesy the Library of Congress.

In July of 1890, the New York Times reported:

As woman…is now being educated to take a more active part in all branches of employment, and as she has tasted the pleasures of independence...one is forced to conclude that woman’s position in industry is secure and will be permanent. Every occupation, except those calling for too much out-door exposure or too much muscular labor, is open to woman, and if she has not already secured a footing therein the next census will show that she has found a way.

Like their contemporary counterparts, working moms in 19th century New York often struggled to find childcare. Many would drop children off at day nurseries (now more commonly known as day care centers), which were usually connected to larger religious charitable institutions. These nurseries cared for thousands of children, often for little or no cost, but their services came with strings attached in the form of religious and cultural indoctrination that often contradicted the family’s own practices.

A New York woman and her daughters making garters at home in 1908.

Image courtesy the Library of Congress.

In addition to the challenge of finding child care, working women also faced low wages, long hours and major social stigmas. Many chose to conceal the fact they worked, or led others to believe that their work was a hobby rather than a necessity. Piecework—small manufacturing jobs done by hand—allowed women to work at home, giving them the option to keep their money-making endeavors private and eliminating the need for child care. In fact, many children helped their mothers with this work to support the household.

Cultural attitudes about women in the workplace changed rapidly--and dramatically--as the 20th century progressed. According to a 2009 study, women are now the primary earners in two thirds of American families. Mainstream culture no longer stigmatizes mothers for working outside the home, but employment and parenthood continue to pull working women in opposite directions. Despite our advances, Nathalie, Jenny and their contemporaries might find this struggle very familiar!

Happy Mother's Day to all moms--whatever their work may be!

--Posted by Kira Garcia and Marianne De Padua

Keeping Kosher Circa 1914

2011-05-03T10:35:00.000-04:00

Tenement Museum Educator Sarah Lohman has a passion for history and food. Through her blog, "Four Pounds Flour," she explores early American cuisine. Recently, Sarah wrote about her experience with keeping Kosher, the practice of adhering to traditional Jewish dietary laws about what can be eaten and how food should be prepared. For her project, Sarah followed recipes from meals served in 1914 at Ellis Island. Below is her first story. To read the complete series, visit Four Pounds Flour.

I work three days a week at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum as an educator. I guide visitors through tiny, dark apartments. Small spaces that 100 years ago housed families of eight or more.

Standing in the kitchen (the one with no running water, no refrigeration, and limited storage space), someone always asks with a sense of awe: “How did they do it?”

The Levine family's kitchen at 97 Orchard Street

Not just how did they raise a family, do the laundry, run a business or the myriad of tasks that took up a tenement dweller’s day. What they’re really asking is “How did they keep Kosher?” How did the millions of Jewish immigrants that poured into the Lower East Side around the turn of the century manage to preserve the traditions of their faith in the airless kitchens of a five floor walk up?

“I have no idea,” I answer. “But I’m going to find out.”

This week, I’m following kashruth. In my four floor walk up in Queens; in my modern kitchen; and only for three days. A drop in the bucket compared to the daily ins and outs of the Jewish housewife 100 years ago (or the contemporary Orthodox housewife in Williamsburg, Brooklyn).

The menu I’ll be following is a 1914 daily menu from the Kosher Kitchen at Ellis Island. I came across the menu in Jane Ziegelman’s book 97 Orchard, but the original can be found in the Ellis Island Archives. The Kosher Kitchen was opened in 1911 after advocacy by the Jewish aid organization HIAS. Imagine spending eighteen days on a steamship from Russia, where you may or may not have been provided with Kosher food, or may have had to prepare it yourself. You arrive in America to another plate of unkosher food. Exhausted, malnourished, and vulnerable to disease, you were at risk for deportation on medical grounds. The Kosher Kitchen, free to immigrants beings detained at Ellis Island, was a huge step.

Sarah's dishes and utensils designated for meat or dairy

Why is kosher kept? The basis of kosher is derived from Exodus 23:19: “Thou shalt not boil a kid in it mother’s milk.” Meat and dairy must never come together. Everything else is referred to as “parve,” and can be eaten with with meat or dairy. Utensils and dishes must be kept separate for each, as well as dish rags, cutting boards, etc. If one touches the other, the utensils are “traif”, meaning they can’t be used for either. There are laws regarding how long you must wait to eat dairy after meat (anywhere from 4-12 hours depending on your rabbi) and vice versa. There are laws regarding what animals you can eat and what cuts of meat: chickens, cows, fishes. No rabbits. No Shellfish. They must be slaughtered in a certain way and all the blood must be drained before consumption.

100 years ago, Jewish immigrants were divided into two categories: those attempting to preserve their traditions in America, and “Oyster Eaters,” those becoming more liberal and more “American” in their observances.

There’s more to it than that. Nuances and laws I’ll cover over the next few days (or you can brush up at jewfaq).

As the daughter of a Catholic, I viewed kosher like a Catholic would: this is a thing you do and if you don’t do it, you’ll burn in hell. Not so. As my colleague Judy explained it: “This is the thing you do to show your are different than your neighbors. It’s the thing you do to show you are Jewish.”

So for the next three days, my dairy will not touch my meat.

Guess the Artifact: And the Object is...

2011-05-02T13:32:00.000-04:00

On Friday, we asked you to identify the object with the black handle in this picture...

Some of you guessed correctly, and some got very close! The object is a tracing wheel, which is used to transfer pattern markings onto fabric before it's cut for sewing garments. As some of you also pointed out, the wire contraption next to it is a hoop skirt frame, or a crinoline cage. Fabric was attached to these wire circles to create the large bell-shaped skirts popular in the 19th Century.

Can You Guess the Artifact?

2011-04-29T16:44:00.000-04:00

Next week's mystery artifact is a black-handled object with sharp razor like edges on a small wheel. It's placed next to scissors and a large circular contraption, popular within this era.

Can you guess what it is? Check back on Monday for the answer!

Goodbye Mr. Ball Goodbye!: A Tribute Song to Hank Greenberg

2011-04-29T15:42:00.001-04:00

On April 27, 2011, Mark Kurlansky and Kevin Baker joined Tenement Talks to discuss the life and times of Hank Greenberg, an Jewish-American professional baseball player from the 1930s and 1940s. Greenberg is best known for his refusal to play baseball on Yom Kippur in 1934. Audience member, David Bellel from the Lower East Side History Project, brought a special treat for the audience, a song written by Bill Coryn and Harold Smith about Greenberg's ability as a power hitter. Listen to the song here and follow along with the lyrics!

Goodbye Mr. Ball Goodbye

Written by Bill Coryn & Harold Smith
Performed by Groucho Marx, Bing Crosby & Hank Greenberg

Courtesy of the Philco Radio Show

We’ve heard about those old time dangerous pirates

of Captain Kidd and Silver John the Long

but we prefer those modern dangerous Pirates

as our victims walk the plank we sing this song

Oh, goodbye, Mr Ball, goodbye

You are going to see an awful lot of sky

don’t hang around for Richard to open up that door

when Hankus Pankus hits you where you’ve never been hit before

Oh, goodbye, Mr Ball, goodbye

You had better kiss your relatives good bye

when Hank comes to the plate, Ball,

you’re gonna to be out late so

Oh, goodbye, Mr Ball, goodbye

Say hello there to the sun up in the sky

a plate is mighty handy to eat the lean and fat

but not when Hank the Greenberg serves it up with his big bat

Oh, goodbye, Mr Ball, goodbye

Go fly ‘til the blue has met the dawn up in the sky

when Hank gets home run itch, Ball,

you’re going to drop a stitch
so goodbye Mr ball, goodbye

Oh nothing could be finer

than a partner like Ralph Kiner

in the outfield

and I am confirmin’ that I’ll work for Billy Herman

in the infield

Oh goodbye, Mr Ball, goodbye

you had better kiss your relatives goodbye

Wait a minute, when the count is 2-0 and I let that third one go,

what happens then?

You’re out

Oh Goodbye Mr Hank goodbye

And furthermore,

when I think I've got a hit and it winds up in Slaughter's mitt

How about that?

Too bad

Oh goodbye Mr. Hank Goodbye

Oh, Mr. Greenberg

Goodbye Mr. Hank Goodbye

Lyrics courtesy of hankgreenbergfilm.org

A Conversation with Mark Kurlansky on Hank Greenberg

2011-04-27T08:00:00.001-04:00

Mark Kurlansky, the author of Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn't Want to Be One, explores the legendary life of Hank Greenberg, the famous first baseman and power hitter for the Detroit Tigers in the 1930s.

Why does Hank Greenberg remain so important in American Jewish history?
In the 1930s, at a time when there was so much anti-Semitism in America that Jews hesitated to be too conspicuous, here was a Jewish superstar who seemed fearless, who faced relentless anti-Semitism and never backed away. But in the longer view of history, Hank Greenberg was a man who stood against not only anti-Semitism but racism and bigotry in general, and did so with remarkable grace. His refusal to ever use prejudice as an excuse and his ability to always keep his dignity stand as an important chapter in the history of the fight against bigotry in America, one that can inspire not only Jews but all victims of hatred and discrimination.

How much of his decision not to play ball on Yom Kippur, 1934, was informed by his religious faith?
He had no religious faith, was completely secular. When his team needed him in a tight pennant race, on Rosh Hashanah, he played. But by Yom Kippur the pennant was secure, and since many Jews had been upset about Rosh Hashanah and it was an embarrassment for his family, he decided not to play. The following year on Yom Kippur he was in a World Series and his team needed him, and he agreed to play without hesitation. But a wrist injury the day before prevented him from participating, thereby securing the myth that "Hank Greenberg won't play on the High Holidays." It never came up again.

Was Hank Greenberg always uncomfortable with the idea of being a hero to American Jews?
Yes, he was very uncomfortable about it. Jews were constantly trying to honor him at banquets and give him gifts, and he turned both down, saying he just wanted to be a ballplayer. He never wanted to deny being Jewish but did not believe that it should give him a special standing.

How much did Detroit figure into his experience and his legend?
Had he played in New York his story might have been different. But he was in Detroit, a city with a small tightly knit Jewish community and a general public with a great deal of anti-Semitic feeling. In the years he was playing, two of the most notorious anti-Semites in the country, Father Coughlin and Henry Ford, were both spewing hate in Detroit.

What qualities defined him as an athlete?
Though his swing was unbelievably graceful, he was never considered a natural athlete. He was large, a bit awkward, and flat-footed. But he was also extremely powerful and the most hardworking player in the history of professional baseball. He spent hours before and after games practicing his swing and his fielding moves. Whenever his performance was lacking he worked on that particular move until he had it down. And in an age when other players such as Babe Ruth were out carousing, he kept himself in top physical condition year round.

What qualities most defined him as a man?
His humility, without a doubt.

This interview was conducted and published by the Yale University Press.

Accessibility at the Tenement Museum

2011-04-26T11:37:00.001-04:00

We love a good conversation here at the Tenement Museum. In fact, we learn something new every time a visitor shares their own family story. To keep the dialogue going strong, we want to make the museum accessible to as many people as possible. This spring, we’re announcing two new initiatives which will go a long way toward this goal.

Starting in May, we’ll be launching a series of Tenement Talks with Open Captioning—a service that provides real-time captions displayed on a large screen in conjunction with the spoken presentation. These captions are great for audience members with any degree of hearing impairment.

Later this year, we’ll also be launching our new Shop Life exhibition, which explores the history of the retail spaces on the street level of 97 Orchard Street. Though the upper floors of the historic tenement will remain inaccessible to wheel chairs and folks who don’t climb stairs, we’ll be able to install a lift for access to the new exhibit—making it the first accessible building tour at 97 Orchard!

These programs and others are coordinated by the Museum’s Education Associate for Program Development, Sarah Litvin. Sarah also oversees the series of ASL tours given by Educator Alexandria Wailes and Touch Tours lead by educators trained in verbal description for visitors who are blind or have low vision. She also coordinates walking and virtual tours for those who use wheelchairs, and she’s currently working on making our school group programming suitable and adaptable for students on the autism spectrum.

Click here for a short video introduction to our ASL Tours with Alexandria.

“Working to create accessible programming in a building that’s dim, cramped, and noisy is certainly a challenge.” says Sarah. “We’re always learning from visitors, advisors, and colleagues and we’ve applied what we’ve learned to improve the museum experience for all visitors.”

For example, our educators now pass around handling objects and offer large-scale images to illustrate tours. They’re also trained not to speak with the lights out. These changes are applied to all tours, not just those with visitors who have told us they’re blind or hard of hearing.

If you have any questions or suggestions about accessibility at the Tenement Museum, post your comment here or send Sarah a note at Slitvin@tenement.org

The Archaeology of Home with Katharine Greider

2011-04-22T10:24:00.000-04:00

Next Thursday, April 28th, Tenement Talks will welcome Katharine Greider, who'll discuss her book The Archeology of Home: An Epic Set on a Thousand Square Feet of the Lower East Side. One of our stellar interns, Patricia Pforte, recently interviewed the author by phone.

Tenement Museum: Your story starts when you were told to leave your house [on East 7th Street in Manhattan] or risk it falling down. Do you remember that day?

Katharine Greider: It was a surreal experience. There were darkening clouds for a few years and they burst one evening. There had been troubling signs along the way - the roof would leak, there were sinking places in the basement, and cracks in and outside the building. Bad things were happening. We and our co-owners hired an architect and he was going to tell us how to fix it. Instead he called and said we needed to get out ASAP. Although we knew there were problems we never thought it would be that bad. And we had no idea if we were going to come back or how long we would be away. Our kids were small; it was a time in our lives when we were focused on establishing a home.

As part owner of a building that's in a state of decay, of course, you're responsible. The Red Cross doesn't show up with coffee and sandwiches. Instead a buildings inspector comes and gives you a ticket.

Tenement Museum: Have you always wanted to write a book like this?

Katharine Greider: I was actually sort of reluctant to write my own story. But I was fascinated with the history and ideas of home and I knew I would need to bring in my own voice and share the experience or the rest of the story would seem disembodied. It is not traditional history, it is about ordinary people chosen by a kind of lottery--people who happened to have lived at this spot. It actually exalts ordinary people, which we all are. In any memoir I think the writer hopes that people will recognize their own humanity in the writing. That's true of most literature.

Tenement Museum: Your story is sort of like the private home version of what the Tenement Museum is about. We all uncover the layers of stories, histories, lives beneath the surface to gain insights to the ways things were and how they are now. Do you agree?

Katharine Greider: I think it comes from a similar impulse as the Tenement Museum. There's a place in the book when I talk about the museum and the feeling in those rooms that the walls are closing in. You wonder how people found a sanctuary for the body there or space for the self.

The other message that comes out of the Tenement Museum is about being a newcomer, especially a poor newcomer. That may be a hardship, but it is not a disgrace. That's a key lesson of New York City's history. It teaches that of course a Bronx housing project can produce a Sonia Sotomayor. New York and the Lower East Side in particular represent that idea for America.

Tenement Museum: Your discussions of home are deeply moving. Do you have a different sense of home now, and how do you feel about the fact that a new apartment building now exists where yours did?

Katharine Greider: The building on 7th Street was the first ever built on that spot. But I know that spot has to be used by people, and the building as it was just couldn't serve that purpose any longer. It was at the end of its useful life. As I started to see some of the stories that unwound there, I felt that so much was passing away with the building. I wanted to make a vessel that could hold some of those memories.

Passover with the Confinos at 97 Orchard

2011-04-21T10:49:00.001-04:00

This week many families are celebrating the Jewish holiday of Passover, or Pesach. During this holiday, traditional foods take on important symbolism during a ritual meal called a Seder. While the core elements of this holiday are universal, the observation of Passover varies between nationalities, cities and even families.

In 1916, the Confinos were one of three Sephardic Jewish families living at 97 Orchard St. Coming from Kastoria, in modern day Greece, the Confinos celebrated Passover slightly differently than their Eastern European neighbors.

The Confino Family c. 1911-1917

Since food is such an important part of Passover, some of the most noticeable differences between the Confinos' traditions and those of their neighbors had to do with the dishes they prepared and ate. Many of these foods reflected their Spanish ancestry. For example, rather than eating gefilte fish, the Confinos served "peshi di vinagre": chilled baked carp with a tomato and vinegar sauce.

Before the advent of refrigeration, the easiest way to keep the carp fresh was to keep it alive until the last possible moment. One descendant of the Confino family remembers going to her grandmother's house in the 1930's, saying, "My nona Rachel had a big humongous carp fish...in her bathtub swimming back and forth. I'd say to her, how are we going to eat this? And she'd say, 'I gotta hit it on the kavesa'. In other words--boom--on the head. But I never saw her do it."

The matzoh balls the Confinos prepared also looked slightly different from those of their Eastern European neighbors. These "albondegas" (very close to "albondigas", the Spanish word for meatballs), were small--a little big bigger than marbles--and very dense. One Confino descendant says that "people either love them or think they taste like lead pellets."

For dessert, the Confinos ate bumuelos (also known as buñuelos), matzoh meal dumplings fried in oil in a special pot, then cooked in a boiling sugar and honey syrup. These were served cold and topped with ground walnuts. After dinner, the adults would have enjoyed turkish coffee made in a long-handled pot called a finjan. This thick, sweetened coffee is known for being especially strong.

Notes from My Breakfast with Bloomberg

2011-04-16T12:00:00.004-04:00

Last Thursday morning I made a trip to Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side for a breakfast reception attended by immigrant advocacy groups from all over the city. The event was hosted by Mayor Bloomberg to celebrate the city’s 8th Annual Immigrant Heritage Week. It was a long way from Orchard Street, but the topics we discussed were very familiar.

It was great to hear from Mayor Bloomberg and Fatima Shama, the city’s Immigrant Affairs Commissioner. Immigrant Heritage Week was launched by the Mayor, who frequently talks about the importance of immigrants to New York City. Bloomberg spoke about efforts his office is making to work together with other cities around the U.S., and emphasized New York’s responsibility to lead the way for immigration reform—something I found especially important. He spoke about how the country cannot wait for Washington to pass legislation; rather, we should start the work together at the grass roots level. The Mayor also discussed the important roles that immigrants have always played in building our society, and the great economic benefits immigrants bring to major cities, which are particularly important in hard times.

The Mayor and the Commissioner honored several people working to help immigrants in the city. One of the honorees was the founder of Reportorio Espanol, a little theater in Manhattan that has been showcasing amazing plays from Spanish speaking writers and authors. Just last month I actually visited this theater and enjoyed a play about Dominicans who suffered during the regime of Trujillo in the 1940s.

Many organizations throughout the city are celebrating this week. For example, the Mayor’s office has been working with StoryCorps to record the stories of immigrant New Yorkers and their families. This project is open to the public, and the mayor encouraged all of us to participate.

Here at the Tenement Museum, we focus on immigrant histories, but we also discuss contemporary issues and make connections between the two. The Mayor seems very supportive of this, and very much aligned with our mission to promote tolerance and historical perspective. It was exciting to be among so many people that care for immigrants today and the many that have come before us.

--Pedro Garcia, Tenement Museum Education Associate

How a Mongol Became a Jew Became Irish

2011-04-15T12:30:00.001-04:00

While I am Italian on my mom’s side, the stories of my paternal grandfather Adolf Berkowitz are the most well known in my family. Adolf was born in the Austro-Hungarian village of Essen. His father, Max, was part of the Honor Guard for Franz Josef and was armed with a sword. According to family lore an anti-Semite in the town began to harass Max’s father, tugging at his long beard. Fueled by an infamous temper, which has been diluted in recent Berke generations, Max struck the man with his sword. More outlaw than immigrant, he then fled the country leaving his family behind. In 1917 he was able to send money to my great-grandmother Bertha and my 7 year old grandfather Adolf and they crossed the sea to join him in Pittsburgh.

Thirty years later, my grandfather had grown up to be the only Jewish doctor in Antioch, Illinois, and had shortened his name from Berkowitz to Berke. Safe under the guise of an Irish name, Adolf made frequent house calls, carrying with him a large alligator skin bag full of vials of brightly colored pills. When my father Jerry Berke was a child he would sometimes ride this bag like a cowboy patrolling the desert, or perhaps like a nomad on the steppes of Eurasia.

Genghis Khan -- A distant relation? Jerry Burke, the Author's Father

Berkowitz means “son of Berke.” I’ve been told that the first Berke—from whom all Berkowitzes are descended—was the grandson of Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire. So somewhere back there we were Mongols, and perhaps it was the blood of a warrior that caused my great-granddaddy Max to lose his temper that day and strike out for a new life in America. And perhaps it is the ambition of a Mongol horde that drives me to pursue a career in show biz. So I guess what I’m trying to say is, thank you Genghis Khan.

Elly Berke is an educator and costumed interpreter at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. She joined the museum in 2009 to play Victoria Confino, thus fulfilling a dream of combining her degrees in American Studies, Theatre, and Museum Studies. Elly acts professionally and studies at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.

Remembering Roosevelt

2011-04-14T12:53:00.001-04:00

When I was very young in Vienna, my nanny took me to see the triumphant entrance of Adolph Hitler into the city where he once led an impoverished life. The crowds were huge and hysterical with joy. I was too young to understand that he was a threat to my life, but my mother, knowing better, escaped to New York with me.

Six years later, in 1944 I stood in the rain on Broadway along with a sparse crowd. President Roosevelt was running for a fourth term. As he drove by in an open car we let out a cheer for the President who, looking quite ill, would die just months later.

Tenement Museum Educator Dorothea Scher

Whenever I bring a group of visitors to the Baldizzi apartment at 97 Orchard Street, I see Roosevelt’s photograph on the wall and am reminded of the heroic status he achieved by carrying this nation through the great depression. As a new American, Roosevelt represented the best of this country to me, so I know why Sadie and Al hung his photograph on their wall.

Dorothea Scher arrived in New York as an immigrant, so she is naturally very attached to the Tenement. She experienced some of the things we talk about on our tours and so she enjoys sharing. She has much more fun being retired than being an agent for commercial photographers, something she did for quarter of a century. Dorothea has also volunteered at the Morgan Library, among other institutions, which is a very different venue from 97 Orchard.

America's Child

2011-04-13T13:44:00.001-04:00

I guess I never felt like I fit in anywhere, but public school was the worst. On the days I felt like running away, my dad would offer comfort by telling me that he felt the same as a kid. Though this was meant to make me feel better, instead it made me even more melancholy.

He would begin by remembering a question posed by his first grade teacher:

“Who would like to tell the class what they ate for breakfast this morning? OK, George, you had your hand up first. Go ahead.”

“I had fross-ted, fluck-us!”

“I don’t know what that is George. Can you explain it?”

“Fross-ted Fluck-us! You know… Tony the Tiger… They’re GRRR-ATE!!”

The whole suburban first grade class burst out laughing once they understood. Even the teacher laughed. My dad, an immigrant from Germany, flushed red and sat down. But he found a language to recount the story years later and could even laugh at himself about it.

Tenement Museum Educator Jason Eisner with a photograph of his father as a child in Germany

I grew up listening to this kind of English when we would travel on weekends or for holidays or birthdays to my grandparent’s house. Their accent was thick, but I understood them… the thing is I don’t remember now what they said.

Instead, I remember heavy food smells, and running down the hill on the side of their house. And I remember a densely packed basement full of boxes and treasures and laundry drying on a line. I remember sneaking into my grandparents' bedroom where I was surprised by how cool it felt, always, and by the rose smell that made me think of grandma. There was a picture on their wall from another time and place, with grandpa in a uniform fighting for the wrong army.

There were times I didn’t understand what they said because they spoke in German or Czech. My dad didn’t understand either, but we both knew we were being talked about.

The language of my grandparents was a private code. A secret. It was their intimacy and their history. It died with them. I am the son of an immigrant who has lost his tongue and his history. I am the ideal lost American son.

Jason Eisner is an activist visual artist who migrated to New York from the suburbs of Chicago a decade and a half ago. When he is not working full time on his art production he works as an Educator at the Tenement Museum, where he is committed (though story telling) to changing the world, one visitor at a time.

New to New York

2011-04-12T14:25:00.001-04:00

People come to the United States for various reasons; freedom, economic stability, a better life for their children. I came for love. My wife brought me here. At the age of 30 I found myself an immigrant in an amazing, bewildering city.

I work at the Tenement Museum, delving deep into the experiences of immigrants who arrived over a hundred years before me, and their stories have grounded me in this new place. By exploring their trials and tribulations I have been gifted with perspective of my own.

It is true that those who came before us were just people like ourselves, living in a different time, doing the best they could with what they had available. I remember walking down Broadway near Lincoln Center and feeling utterly lost and aimless in New York, no job, still waiting on my work permit, terrified at starting my life over again. Thinking about my friends and family that I had left behind in New Zealand. Frightened to jay walk, paranoid that some cop would arrest me for doing it. I also felt so challenged. At times I would want to curl up into a ball and just disappear. I didn’t want to start my life over again. I had to find the drive to start over.

Tenement Museum Educator Raj Varma

Even language was different for me in America. I grew up speaking not American English, but the Queen’s English (Like Colin Firth). For me, a “torch” is an instrument that you put batteries into that creates light. However, it caused a huge laugh at a Tenement Museum educator meeting when I mentioned that object; my colleagues pointed out that here they call it a flashlight. I think they envisioned me as a New Zealand version of Indiana Jones, wandering through the building with an ignited rag wrapped around a human femur. In New Zealand a “bench” is what Americans call a “countertop”. Biscuits vs. cookies, zebra crossings vs. crosswalks, entrees vs. appetizers vs. mains vs. entrees. I could go on. And on. And on.

On a more serious level, it took me years to be able to use the term “black” without feeling like I was going to offend somebody, and terms that are loaded here, like the “N” word, I used flippantly in New Zealand as a teenager. We never had a civil rights movement in New Zealand. The “N” word was more of a joke than a racial slur.

On my honeymoon, my wife and I went to the Finger Lakes district in Western New York and we hired a car. I ended up driving into incoming traffic on the highway. It was instinctual for me, I had to undo what I knew and adapt to the new way.

And when I think of immigrants at the Tenement each day, I can imagine how they would have felt upon their arrival in Manhattan. It’s conjecture that those feelings may have mirrored my own. Nobody will know how Bridget Moore felt in 1863 when she arrived in this new world. But I take heart in the belief that emotions are divine. We have felt them since before the ages and they make us human.

To know the struggles of those who have come before is a gift indeed. To feel emotionally connected with these souls is a validation for me. I share in their triumph and quietly gain confidence from the knowledge that if they did it, so can I. And for those who failed, those that died with dreams unfulfilled, I am reminded everyday of how lucky I am to enjoy the benefits of a nation made rich through the waves of immigrants that created it.

Rajeev Varma is a New Zealand-born Rajasthani/Punjabi actor who has worked extensively in theatre, film and television. He starred in New Zealand's prime time comedy, The Millen Baird Show and New Zealand's first Indo-Asian sketch comedy show, 1000 Apologies. He is one half of the comedy duo Those Indian Guys, with comedian Tarun Mohanbhai. His one-man show D’Arranged Marriage has been playing in Manhattan for almost two years. Rajeev currently lives in Brooklyn, New York with his amazing and patient wife.

My Mother's Gift

2011-04-11T13:40:00.001-04:00

In 1990, I was one year old and on my way to America. My father had begged my mother to let me stay with him in the Philippines, so a compromise was struck—I would move between worlds and cultures for the first few years of my life. Soon, it was my mother’s turn to say goodbye to me at the gate and fly back to America alone, leaving my father to care for me with the help of my army of Titas (aunties).

When she returned home to the U.S., my mom packed away my things and spent that year avoiding birthday parties for her friends’ children. It was too much, she would later tell me -- “But I did what I had to do.”

My mother’s life is defined by this phrase. Her courage was rooted in her responsibility to sustain the future of her family with each paycheck she sent home.

Tenement Museum Intern Marianne De Padua and her Family

In 1986, my mother was a frail and naïve 26-year-old woman who came to America for the first time seeking a better life. She worked long hours as a nurse between two hospitals and lived in a small apartment on the outskirts of Atlantic City, New Jersey.

For years I never understood her absence. She was still a stranger to me even after my father’s visa was approved and we moved to America to live with her and my new baby sister. Through my young eyes, mom worked from dawn until well into the night. When she was home, she was tired and always cooking a week’s worth of food. My mother always seemed angry.

At 22 years old, I am in awe of the strength it must have taken for my mother to leave her country and her family. My resentment towards her has turned into immense gratitude for giving me a life of limitless opportunities. Like most immigrant family stories, ours is one of sacrifice and unwavering faith in the American dream. Because of my mother, we are all living her dream.

Marianne De Padua is an intern with the Public Affairs Department at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. She is currently a senior majoring in Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. Marianne hopes to pursue a career in public relations, working for non-profit organizations or museums in New York City.

Celebrating Immigrant Heritage Week

2011-04-11T13:35:00.001-04:00

This Monday marks the start of Immigrant Heritage Week here in New York City--a time to celebrate the rich contributions that immigrants make to our city and our nation. It’s especially meaningful for us at the Tenement Museum, where we discuss both immigrant history and contemporary issues with thousands of visitors from around the world each week.

The United States has been a nation of immigrants from the start. Our culture reflects this in the foods we eat, the music we hear and the holidays we celebrate; our economy is fueled by the labor and innovation of immigrant workers and entrepreneurs.

Chinese Schoolchildren c.1910

Here at the Tenement Museum, we celebrate the strength and variety of our immigrant experiences every day. Often, visitors find that the stories we tell mirror those of their own families. Whether our roots are in South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, or right here in New York, we can all find commonalities with the people who started new lives at 97 Orchard Street.

This week is a perfect time to support immigrant heritage and the Tenement Museum by paying us a visit or joining us as a museum member. We are a community organization in the truest sense, and we hope you’ll contribute to our ongoing conversation.

In an effort to share some of our own personal histories, and in celebration of this important week, we’re excited to present a series of stories from our museum staff members here on our blog. I hope you’ll check back to read each of these uniquely powerful contributions. Today you’ll find the first of five installments.

--Morris J. Vogel, Tenement Museum President

Why Architecture Matters with Paul Goldberger

2011-04-08T16:42:00.005-04:00

“Like the best art criticism, the education of Goldberger's eye explains much of what one feels but had not fully understood in looking at them.” -- John Berridge

We all need a place to sleep; it seems like one of the most basic needs—shelter.

Paul Goldberger discusses the places in which we shelter, work and play. He discusses when architecture is necessary and aesthetic, and goes beyond necessity to architechture’s function, sustainability, beauty and effect on our emotions. So we all need, want and like architecture—but do we need criticism?

Right before the Tenement Talk with Paul Goldberger, and as guests streamed in and took their seats Paul looked carefully at the Tenement Museum’s books, toys and cultural objects. He stood in front of the shelves, diving into the details and continued that scrutiny until right before the Talk began. Mr Goldberger is known for this detailed observation as a writer and architecture critic, from his work at the New York Times to his “Skyline” column in The New Yorker. The Talk began. There was laughter and detailed answers to complex questions related to his work as a critic. As he spoke, the detail and description he provided about buildings like those at Astor Place or Columbus Circle displayed a never-ending search for the specific ideas embedded in architecture and which his criticism aims to illuminate.

Architecture matters for a variety of reasons: because of need, function, beauty and even emotion. The discerning and critical eye of writers like Goldberg bring those reasons to the forefront and draw our attention inward to the ways architecture makes us feel and upward to the buildings themselves.

Criticism comes in many forms, including humor. In the clip below from The Colbert Report, Paul Goldberger and Stephen Colbert trade criticisms, and jokes about Why Architecture Matters.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Paul Goldberger

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

Video Archive

Posted by Patricia Pforte

Guess the Artifact: And the Object is...

2011-04-04T14:33:00.000-04:00

On Friday, we asked readers to try their hand at identifying this mystery item.

It’s called a “stove top lifter” and dates back to 1870. The device, which rests on the Gumpertz family stove, is used to lift up the circular shaped covers on the stove top.

Several readers guessed this right away! We'll try to stump you next time...

Can You Guess the Artifact?

2011-04-01T17:04:00.001-04:00

Our next mystery object is made of metal. It's small, slender and designed with coils around the top, and it can be found in the kitchen. Can anyone guess what it was used for?

Check back on Monday for the answer!

Guess the Artifact: And the object is...

2011-04-01T16:27:00.002-04:00

The answer to Monday's Guess the Artifact quiz is....

This is known as a “blackjack” and dates back to 1860. It is a small, easily-concealable club made of a leather-wrapped lead weight, attached to the end of a leather-wrapped coil spring. Joseph Moore would have used a blackjack like this one to protect himself while walking home from a long night of working at the pub.

Make sure to look for the blackjack while touring the Moore’s family apartment!

Congratulations to those of you who guessed correctly!

Questions for Curatorial - Keening

2011-04-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

Is keening a mourning ritual practiced only by Irish Catholics?

Traditionally performed at Irish wakes and funerals during the 19^th century and centuries before, keening consisted of high pitched, discordant songs sung in Irish, which eulogized the dead. While the practice appears to have been more common in Ireland, it was also performed in

Scotland

. Keening was usually performed by mna caoine [“na keen” or keening woman], old women either related to the deceased or specially hired to keen.

Keening seems to have predated the introduction of Catholicism to

Ireland

. Indeed, keening and drinking at the wake were rituals that the Catholic Church tried to forbid, since Catholic officials felt that they cast Irish Catholic immigrants in a negative light (and because the rituals themselves were holdovers from pagan practices).

What is more, keening was one of the Irish rituals that native-born Americans pointed to as an example of Irish racial. George Templeton Strong^[^1], the prominent nativist New Yorker and member of the Union Club, kept a meticulous diary during the 19^th century. In an entry dated July 7, 1857, he describes coming upon a construction accident on

Fourth Avenue

in which the earth has caved in on a number of Irish laborers. In typical nativist fashion, rather then commiserating with the plight of the deceased laborers and commenting upon the working conditions that might have led to such an accident, Strong focuses instead on the reaction of the Irish women on hand, and its reflection on the “Irish” character. He wrote:

Seeing a crowd on the corner, I stopped and made my way to a front place. The earth had caved in a few minutes before and crushed the breath out of a pair of ill-starred Celtic laborers. They had just been dragged, or dug, out, and lay white and stark on the ground where they had been working, ten or twelve feet below the level of the street. Around them were a few men who had got them out, I suppose, and fifteen or twenty Irish women, wives, kinfolk or friends, who had got down there in some inexplicable way. The men were listless and inert enough, but not so the women. I suppose they were “keening”; all together were raising a wild, unearthly cry, half shriek and half song, wailing as a score of daylight Banshees, clapping their hands and gesticulating passionately. Now and then one of them would throw herself down on one of the corpses, or wipe some trace of defilement from the face of the dead man with her apron, slowly and carefully, and then resume her lament. It was an uncanny sound to hear. . . .Our Celtic fellow citizens are almost as remote from us in temperament and constitution as the Chinese.

^[1] George Templeton Strong also famously commented after the draft riots, that “I would like to see war made on Irish scum as in 1688,” a specific reference to William of Orange’s campaign against the Catholic James II in Ireland, which culminated in the defeat of James’s Irish and French troops at the Battle of the Boyne.