Unsung Immigrants: Sam "Seymore" Gottesman

Unfortunately it's impossible to learn about the individual histories of every one of the many 97 Orchard residents just by taking our building tours. Yet we understand that they each deserve recognition for the interesting and often extraordinary lives they have led.

Sam Gottesman is one of these lesser known tenement residents but an important friend to the Tenement Museum.

Sam was born on the fourth of July, 1901, in New York City. His father, David Gottesman, who worked as a machinist, and mother, Tobia Herman Gottesman, had immigrated from Romania. Sam was the first American-born member of the family. Together, they lived in one of 97 Orchard's third floor apartments for the first years of Sam's life. 

Here he is as an infant sometime during late 1901 or early 1902:

Collection of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum © 2010

Sam left the family's Lower East Side home along with his parents when they decided to return to Romania; it is unclear why they chose to leave the United States.

His parents stayed in the old country, but Sam returned to New York in 1924 and quickly found work as a bookkeeper. More of a frequent traveler than other early residents of the LES, Sam visited his family in Romania just two years later for "temporary residence," as specified in his 1926 passport, before returning once again to New York City.

Here, you can see a 24 year old Sam in his passport photo:

Collection of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum © 2010

Some 66 years later, in October of 1990, Sam, now "Seymore" as he preferred to be called later in life, contacted the Tenement Museum after reading about our search for 97 Orchard Street alumni in The Jewish Week.

In February of 1991, he commuted from his home in the Bronx to visit the Museum and generously recorded his childhood memories to tape. Some of his fondest were of "the verbal newspaper," the tenement's rooftop.

"Oh, the roof..." he said, "that was the promised land. When you went there you had the sun. And neighbors used to get together and schmooze over politics, and settle arguments, and gossip of course... You had to know what the neighbors were doing... what she cooked in the afternoon... whether he had a quarrel with his wife or not, and whether they made up... whether Hattie went out with Jimmy, and stuff like that. You had to know those things."

He told us the roof served a more practical purpose, too, as his parents needed to know if "someone had picked up a bargain or if there was a sale." During hard times, he said, "that was also a part of life."

Mr. Gottesman returned to the Tenement Museum in March of '91 to be interviewed for a Seattle radio program focused on Lower East Side immigrants, and in April he visited again for an interview with the Christian Science Monitor. Gracious as always, he took the museum's oral historian and researcher, Amy Berkson, out to lunch during each visit.

Sadly one year later Mr. Gottesman passed away at the age of 90, leaving behind a son, Tobias, living in Maryland.

Mr. Gottesman was a great asset to the Tenement Museum's early days and an interesting figure, balancing two cultures and their influences more literally than most immigrants who settled in New York City. From Romania to New York to Romania and back again, his story that sheds new light on what it means to be an immigrant in America.

-Posted by Joe Klarl

Visitor of the Week: Jasmine Tanasy

Over the summer, look out for this new feature - Visitor of the Week! Each week we'll profile a different person who's been to the Tenement Museum. If you're coming to visit and would like to be profiled on the blog, send us as email.

Meet Jasmine Tanasy, who visited the week of May 24. Jasmine, a New Jersey resident who is in branding, came to New York for school but also to learn about some of her ancestors.

Jasmine, like many of our visitors, has immigrant and tenement ties. Half of her mother’s side of the family came through New York City and eventually settled in Brooklyn. On her father’s side, her grandfather and his father immigrated from Ireland and came to live in Jersey City.

“I remember my grandfather telling stories of how he and his father lived in one room apartments, which is very similar to tenement living,” recalled Jasmine.

We were very pleased to find out that Jasmine has done all the tours the Tenement Museum has to offer. After she took her first tour, she was so intrigued that she felt compelled to come back and do them all.

“I’ve been recommending it like crazy!” she said.

Her favorite was the Getting By tour featuring the Gumpertz and Baldizzi families. When asked what was most resonant about the tour, Jasmine mentioned two parts.

“With the Gumpertz family, it was really great to see the story come to the present,” Jasmine explained, referring to the way family members helped piece together the story of their ancestors. She was also moved by the connection between the Gumpertz' 19th century tragedy (Mr. Gumpertz' disappearance) and their 21st century one (Frank Riesman, a Gumpertz descendant, was killed in the World Trade Center attacks).

Jasmine also found that listening to the daughter of the Baldizzi family reminisce on tape about her time at 97 Orchard Street was very poignant.

“To hear Josephine talk was one of the best pieces of the tour,” Jasmine said.

-posted by Devin

Have an Immigration Story? We'd Like to Hear It!

Here at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, we know there are tons of stories out there, just waiting to be told. We often hear from Museum visitors about their own fascinating immigration, Lower East Side, and tenement stories, but unfortunately there's usually not enough time to discuss them at length during the tours.

If you are one of these people, we want to hear from you! We are looking to interview people about their stories, which will be posted here on our blog.

If you are interested and want to learn more, please contact Devin at prmintern@tenement.org.

-posted by Devin

The Story of a Tenant and Her Descendants

Earlier this year, two descendants of a family of 97 Orchard residents met with our curatorial team and shared their mother's childhood story. Jacqueline Burinescu was born in the building in 1919 and lived there until 1928. Her father, a Romanian immigrant, pushed aside dreams of performing Yiddish theater (he was in an acting troupe back home) and ran a clothes cleaning business at 92 Orchard. He died of influenza shortly after the 1918 pandemic, leaving Jacqueline's independent-minded mother, a member of a socialist group active in the woman's suffrage movement, in charge of making ends meet. Jacqueline and her five siblings took on odd jobs to help support the family, including a stint fluffing feathers in a factory. Their mother, an immigrant from Odessa, a seaside province of Ukraine, eventually remarried an Italian-born 97 Orchard resident. Curatorial Director Dave Favaloro and Collections Manager Derya Golpinar plan on visiting Jacqueline at her current home in New Jersey.


Marcia Richter and Judith Lewis graciously donated 40 family photos to the museum, including the snapshot of their mother Jacqueline (top), and their grandmother Sarah (bottom, seated second from the left, with members of her socialist group.)

-posted by Liana Grey