Questions for Curatorial: Where Do I Store My Pushcart?

Curatorial Director Dave answers your questions. Got a question for Dave? Email us.

Do we know if pushcart peddlers would keep their carts in “stables”? Was pushcart peddling a good job relative to other immigrant occupations?

Pushcart peddlers would keep their carts in stables. One such stable existed on Sheriff Street at the turn of the century. In most cases, peddlers did not own their carts, but rented them for about a quarter a day.

In some ways, pushcart peddling was a good job relative to other immigrant occupations but, much like garment work, an incredibly trying and exhausting one as well. Perhaps the greatest attraction of peddling was the idea that a person could be their own boss.

As a reflection of European market culture, it also served as an important link to the past and a means of mediating the transition to life in the United States. Otherwise, long hours and low pay were the rewards of the peddler. According to one son of a Lower East Side pushcart peddler, his father would “get up at 5:30, go get his pushcart from the pushcart stable on Sheriff Street, where he rented it for about a quarter a day. Then he’d wheel it over to the wholesaler Attorney Street. Then he’d take it over to the ferry to Greenpoint. He’d make about $2.00 or 2.50 a day, six days…He’d help feed a family of seven on that.”

Learn more about modern-day street vendors at the Street Vendor Project website.

Pushcarts on the Lower East Side, 1937. Photograph by Arnold Eagle. (c) Lower East Side Tenement Museum 2010.

A former streetscape revealed in destruction on Grand Street

Our Minding the Store project manager, Chris Neville, has been researching the businesses that operated out of 97 Orchard Street from 1863 to 1988. As such, he's become mildly obsessed with the streetscapes of the Lower East Side. He thinks a lot about facades and buildings and how businesses incorporated themselves into tenements. He looks all the time for evidence of how stores in the earlier part of the 20th century, and even into the 19th century, might have set up their spaces. We don't have a lot of documentary evidence about the businesses in 97 or the building's facade, so we look around the neighborhood for similar tenements, checking for the layers of physical fabric that so often exist in older neighborhoods.

His eyes attuned to notice architectural details, Chris right away noticed some markings on the brick walls of the tenements next door to the two that were demolished recently, after the deadly fire on Grand Street. He did some research and discovered what existed on those lots before the tenements were constructed in the 1890s.

Head over to Bowery Boogie to read his post.

Questions for Curatorial: Apartment Leases in the 19th Century

Curatorial Director Dave answers your questions.

Did the residents of 97 Orchard Street have leases for the apartments they rented? What were the terms of these leases?

For much of the 19th century, real estate transactions were sealed by a verbal agreement. From 1863 to 1934, when 97 Orchard Street was a residence, tenants most likely had oral leases. It wasn't until the 1920s that Lower East Side residents moved towards written leases that were more protective of tenants.

This change developed after the New York legislature instituted the Emergency Rent Laws in 1919-1920. Following a severe housing shortage, with escalating rents and widespread evictions, as well as over a decade worth of agitation on the part of tenants associations, these laws placed unprecedented emphasis on tenants obtaining written leases.

Although the Emergency Rent Laws protected tenants who made oral leases, State legislators such as Charles Lockwood and Samuel Untermeyer continually stated that written leases constituted tenants’ only real protection against illegal rent hikes and evictions.

The potential confusion and trouble caused by oral agreements was born out at 97 Orchard Street. On October 3, 1869, 97 Orchard Street resident and Hanover-born real estate broker Heinrich Dreyer met German-born baker Louis Rauch in a saloon on Avenue A. According to Dreyer, Rauch employed him to broker the sale of his bakery at the price of $3500. At that time, the two agreed that Dreyer would receive a 5% commission of $175 for arranging the sale.

According to an October 1870 court case involving Dreyer as the plaintiff and Rauch, Mr. Frederick Schmitt, and Mr. Christopher Weinz as defendants, Rauch never paid Dreyer the promised commission.

In fact, two other real estate agents claim to have brokered the sale of Mr. Rauch’s bakery at 115 Avenue A to Mr. John Rash on January 20, 1870 and were therefore each entitled to the commission.

The court determined that although Rauch made verbal agreements with all three real estate agents (Dreyer, Schmitt, and Rauch), only Schmitt had introduced buyer and seller in person. It was on this basis that the commission was awarded to Frederick Schmitt.

-- Posted by Kate

Tenement Talks - Disappearing Storefronts

Kimberly is a Museum Shop and Tenement Talks associate. She writes about her experience at a recent Talk:

Barbers, bodegas, appetizer shops, locksmiths, and fabric suppliers all represent the entrepreneurial spirit of New York. These stores also provide a visual record of city life: their facades are recognizable in an instant to those who’ve lived here long enough. Some of their signs are missing letters or the neon has burned out, but they are too beloved to ever be changed. When Russ & Daughters had their neon sign repaired, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing as a flurry of customers feared they had gone out of business.


“Mom & Pop” stores become family. I’ve certainly grown up with a few. I’ve had one place cater a going-away party, another press a key for my first car, and another knows my absolute dependence on half and half for my coffee. Corporations tend to large masses of customers. You can go into a chain store and be ignored and some people like that. I don’t. If I go into my corner bodega someone will always say hello to me and want to talk some more.


Photographers James and Karla Murray joined us for a recent Tenement Talk. Their mission is to visually preserve the Mom & Pop, which they do in Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York. The Murrays’ prints are gorgeous, the film full of grain and naturally highlighting the worn patina of old metal signs and rusty hardware. Some of the featured stores have since closed, their signs removed and sold as scrap. While what comes next can also be a vital part of the community, there are those who will ache for the absence of a lost candy store. These photos at the very least preserve the memory of a closed business’s existence.


If you missed our Talk and would like to see the prints, you can check out the book at the Museum Shop or visit the Murrays’ website, http://www.jamesandkarlamurray.com/.

Delicious Lower East Side Landmark

Tastes have changed over the years, but Russ & Daughters' Niki Russ Federman and Joshua Russ Tupper, both fourth-generation owners of this Houston Street appetizing shop, stock some of the same things Polish immigrant Joel Russ sold in 1907, when the store was a pushcart on the corner of Orchard Street. Customers still line up for pickled lox, strings of Polish mushrooms (they now go for $200 a lb), and belly lox - salt-cured salmon that Russ & Daughters staff are quick to point out is the only cured fish that can properly be called lox (if it's smoked, it's not lox).


Mr. Russ opened the brick-and-mortar store seven years after he emigrated from southern Poland. In 1933 he added "& Daughters" to the shop's name and began to turn over the business to his three children. Niki's father worked as a lawyer before becoming the third-generation to join the family business, and Niki and Josh were both employed in other professional fields before becoming the fourth-generation.


Strong family ties brought Joel Russ's grandchildren and great-grandchildren back to the Lower East Side, and it's no surprise that they're passionate about food and community. For a more comprehensive history, see this great timeline.



In the old days they sold products like kapchunkas, whole unprocessed fish hung up to dry. This had to be done just right or the fish would spoil. Russ & Daughters no longer sells kapchunkas but the sign remains. Second-generation Russ Anne Russ Federman remembers a few other items no longer available at the store: "oval cans of tomato herring (they were delicious), butterfish, shad, shemykas, tarankas." Do you remember eating any of these?

Dried Polish mushrooms are used in dishes like barley and mushroom soup. They're so rich and flavorful that just a few can season a whole pot.