Articles from around the web and on the newstand

The Forward looks at 97 Orchard Street: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York City Tenement. This new book, a culinary history of immigrant foodways in America, is centered around some of the families who lived in our tenement. You'll recognize names like Baldizzi and Moore, but the author also talks about the Glockners, who were the original landlords and usually only get a passing mention on our tours ("this six-story tenement was built by German-born tailor Lukas Glockner in 1863..."). Read about what working-class people who lived in New York might have eaten based on their religion, ethnicity, and era in which they lived.
[Read the article]

The City Room blog has a slideshow of images by Rebecca Lepkoff, a photographer who roamed the Lower East Side in the 1940s and 50s. She photographed a dynamic and diverse neighborhood and was especially good at capturing the people who lived here. Ms. Lepkoff is now 94 years old, and she'll be at Tenement Talks tonight to talk about her experiences and her art.
[See the slideshow]

The Village Voice profiles two tenements on Delancey Street which have been the site of old tenant / new tenant / landlord fights in recent years. The author checks in with the building owner, the newcomers, and the longterm residents, looking at neighborhood change and what it means for everyone. It's a little window into the Lower East Side today.
[Read the article]

New York magazine traces the legend of Annie Moore, the first immigrant to be processed through Ellis Island in 1892, when the facility first opened its doors.
[Read the article]

Around the Web

International Women's Day, first celebrated in the United States by factory laborers and suffragists in 1909, is a global day of awareness for women's rights.
[InternationalWomen'sDay.com]

Museums and events celebrating March 8 and Women's History Month locally.
[NYCGo.com]

At the Irish Shrine & Railroad Workers Museum in Baltimore, "the Museum's founder claims that the museum, now comprising two homes tucked into a block of two-and-a-half story brick rowhouses built in 1848, offers the earliest glimpse into urban immigrant life in the United States." Road trip anyone?
[The Urbanite]
[The Irish Shrine]

The retail transition on Delancey Street near the Williamsburg Bridge, where shops became a movie theater and then became more shops.
[Bowery Boogie]

Our neighor at 95 Orchard Street, Il Laboratorio del Gelato, will move to Ludlow Street in June.
[New York Times Diner's Journal]

Petrosino Square and Kenmare Street, the Lower East Side

Today's post is by special guest-bloggers Michelle and James Nevius, authors of Inside the Apple and its corresponding blog. Michelle and James will be at Tenement Talks tonight to share more great tidbits about the Lower East Side and New York.

If the rumors are to be believed, the renovation work on tiny Petrosino Square on the Lower East Side is nearing completion. (And don’t worry if you never heard of Petrosino Square. Bounded by Lafayette, Cleveland Place, and Kenmare Street, the square lies in a distinct no-man’s land between SoHo, Nolita, and the Lower East Side.)

Until 1987, this small triangle of land was called Kenmare Square; along with nearby Kenmare Street, these were the only places on Lower East Side specifically named to honor the area’s Irish population. Prior to 1911, Kenmare Street – which is a four-block western extension of Delancey Street – didn’t exist. But with traffic increasing on the Williamsburg Bridge, the city’s board of aldermen decided to cut a street west from the Bowery to alleviate overcrowding. Rather than simply naming the new street Delancey, which would have required a complete street renumbering, the aldermen voted instead to honor Tammany Hall stalwart “Big” Tim Sullivan (and his mother) by naming the street after his mother’s birthplace, Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland.

As Alderman White noted at the time:

“In my boyhood Mrs. Sullivan exercised a motherly care over me as she did over hundreds of boys on the east side. She was one of the noblest women I ever knew, and I registered a vow a long time ago that if I could ever do anything to show my appreciation of what she did for me and other boys I would do so.”

The square was renamed in 1987 to honor police lieutenant Joseph Petrosino, a pioneer in the NYPD’s fight against organized crime. In 1909, Petrosino traveled to Sicily as part of an investigation into the Mafia and was killed by a supposed informant who turned out to be a Mafia assassination. The renaming of the square not only helps mark the area’s Italian heritage, but also its connection to the NYPD whose magnificent former headquarters stands just two blocks south of the square.

Join us for Inside the Apple Tenement Talk tonight, 6:30 PM, at 108 Orchard Street.