Turn of the Century Comics

Few things capture immigrant life on the Lower East Side better than art, which we'll explore in this week's series.

Because they were published for a broad working class audience, turn of the century comic strips captured the pulse of immigrant life in a way that paintings, photos, and other forms of high-brow art couldn't.

One of the earliest strips was drawn by German immigrant Rudolph Dirks and appeared in the New York Journal in 1897. Dirks and his family settled in Chicago after landing in the US, but his cartoons - which were written in a hybrid of German and English and followed the misadventures of two mischievous brothers nicknamed the Katzenjammer Kids - would have struck a chord with New York's German population.

Even closer to home (literally) for residents of the Lower East Side was a comic strip set in the Fourth Ward's tenements, rear yards, and alleyways. The title character of Richard Outcault's extremely popular Yellow Kid cartoon, which wound up spawning the term "yellow journalism," embodied a somewhat stereotypical notion of the immigrant slums with his hand-me-down nightshirt, shaved head, and hard-knocks attitude. It's possible the Yellow Kid had fans in 97 Orchard; we've found scraps of newspapers throughout the building which might have once contained this or similar cartoons, as well as a comic strip from a 1931 issue of the Daily American in Apartment # 10.

The Yellow Kid comic strip was an offshoot of Hogan's Alley, an earlier Outcault cartoon set in the slums of the Lower East Side. The now-famous boy in the yellow nightdress was one of Hogan Alley's main characters.



A Yellow Kid strip published in William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal in 1896. Lice infestations were frequent in working-class neighborhoods, which would explain the little boy's shaved head.

From Shimmel's Bakery to Shuttered Synagogues

Few things capture immigrant life on the Lower East Side better than art, which we'll explore in this week's series.

These gorgeous black and white snapshots of Lower East Side synagogues and bakeries by Dutch photographer Wijnanda Deroo were taken only 20 years ago, but have the feel of rare historic prints. The only hints of modern life are parked cars, graffiti, black plastic garbage bags, and the jeans and sweaters on customers at the still-thriving Shimmel Knish Bakery on Houston Street. Gertel's Bakery, another one of Deroo's subjects, was known for its tasty, authentic rugelach and challah. Unfortunately, like many mom-and-pop Jewish stores in the Lower East Side, it recently shuttered. The bakery's owners now run a wholesale business out of Williamsburg.



Recent photographs of the former Sons of Israel Kalwarie Synagogue on Pike Street (now a Buddhist temple) and Gertel's Bakery. Deroo's prints aren't floating freely on the web, so we couldn't post them here. Check them out on her website!

Rebecca Lepkoff Photographs

Few things capture turn-of-the-century life on the Lower East Side better than art, which we'll explore in this week's series.

Born in the Lower East Side in 1916, photographer Rebecca Lepkoff kept her camera trained on the neighborhood for over six decades, charting its gradual shift from melting pot to hipster hot spot. Early in her career, Lepkoff joined the progressive (and eventually black-listed ) Photo League, a group of New York shutterbugs that captured, like the Ashcan artists decades before them, the gritty realities of urban street life. Her classic black and white snapshots of the el train, tenement buildings, and mothers with baby carriages are featured in the book Life On the Lower East Side, and were on display for a while at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in SoHo, where visitors could ask to see rare original prints. The gallery's collection still includes works by a number of famous 20th century New York artists, including Jacob Riis.






A Lepkoff photo from the 1940s. Baby carriages were as common a sight on New York's streets back then as they are now.

Early Edison Films

Few things capture turn-of-the-century life on the Lower East Side better than art, which we'll explore in this week's series.


Thomas Edison shot some of the world's first movies in his West Orange, NJ studio (pictured above). When he decided to branch out to other locations in the mid 1890s, it's no surprise he often chose the big, bustling city only 20 miles away - and that some of his short, soundless films feature Ellis Island and the Lower East Side. The Library of Congress has a great selection of these early experiments in motion picture technology. So, of course, does YouTube.




The market in the following film was located on the Lower East Side, probably somewhere near Hester Street, where thousands of pushcart owners were licensed to sell fish.

Art in the Lower East Side: Ashcan Paintings

What was life really like on the Lower East Side over 100 years ago? The artifacts in our collection are great tools for piecing things together, but few things give a better overview than turn-of-the-century paintings, photographs, and films, which we'll explore in this week's series.

The Ashcan school of painting was controversial back in 1908 for the same reason it's so valuable to historians today: it exposed the seedy side of life on the Lower East Side, shocking wealthy New Yorkers who preffered to keep the city's squalor out of sight and out of mind. The turn of the century saw an explosion in progressive muckraking, with journalists like Jacob Riis using newspaper articles and photographs to win reforms for the working-class. What was most revolutionary about the eight founders of the Ashcan school (named for the gritty subjects of their paintings) was the tools they used to conduct their journalistic endeavors: paintbrushes and canvases rather than paper, pen, and camera. Following the motto "art for life's sake," the artists peeked into the saloons, rear yards, and alleyways east of the Bowery, producing works like the following:

Cliff Dwellers, by George Bellows

Six O'Clock, Winter by John Sloan

Dempsey and Firpo, by George Bellows

Other Museums - Wing Luke Asian Museum

This week, we're taking a look at immigration museums off the beaten path.



The Wing Luke Asian Museum sits in the heart of Seattle's Chinatown, but its exhibits cover all corners of the world's largest continent. Check out this photo essay on the Pacific Northwest's Sikh community, which hails originally from the Punjab region of India. Despite intense discrimination and a series of prohibitory laws, Sikhs have been settling in Oregon and Washington since the late 19th century, first as railroad and lumber mill workers and later as white collar professionals.

Other Museums - New Americans Museum

This week, we're taking a look at immigration museums off the beaten path.



Though located in historic Point Loma, the San Diego neighborhood where Portuguese explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo first landed in 1542, the New Americans Museum celebrates the country's newest arrivals rather than preserving the past. According to its website, one in five U.S. citizens was born abroad or is a first generation American. That's roughly 60 million people, each with a story that will probably go unrecorded unless it winds up in the museum's extensive audio and video archive, soon to be available online. The museum especially seeks to engage the country's youngest immigrants. Check out some of the winning entries of an essay contest inviting local students to share their family histories, and a slideshow of a children's citizenship ceremony hosted by the museum earlier this year.


A recent photo exhibit at the museum by Ricardo Ocreto Alvarado (1914-1976) captured life as a Filipino-American in 1950's San Francisco