Podcast: Collections Management and Conservation

An interview with Derya Golpinar, our collections manager and registrar. Derya talks about how she started working at the Tenement Museum, about the Museum's collections, and how we go about conserving a 147-year-old tenement building.

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Adaptive Reuse at the Brooklyn Navy Yard

The Tenement Museum is the perfect example of “adaptive reuse,” a term that describes the preservation of old buildings and structures for new purposes.  The apartments of 97 Orchard Street have been restored from ruin to their current function as a museum that tells the true stories of immigrants who lived there between 1863 and 1935.  Other examples in Manhattan include The High Line, a defunct elevated railway that has been redesigned as a beautiful public park, and the Victorian-Gothic style Jefferson Market Library, a former courthouse that the City converted to a public library branch in the 1960s.

Across the East River in Brooklyn is another exciting example of adaptive reuse at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  The navy yard, which was established in 1801 by the U.S. Navy, is today a 300-acre industrial park home to over 240 businesses.  On a recent bus tour hosted by the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation (BNYDC), and Urban Oyster, I learned about the history of the navy yard and its revitalization as a model of sustainable industry.  The BNYDC, which manages the site for the City of New York, is leading this effort.  Capsys is one tenant that builds environmentally-sensitive modular units to construct affordable housing, hotels, and assisted-living facilities.  Surroundart, a fine arts company, is located in the Perry Building, the country’s first multi-story industrial building with Gold LEED certification.

The Perry Building

As Andrew Kimball, President of the BNYDC, explained in a recent Metropolis magazine article, “We’ve demonstrated here that urban manufacturing is back...It doesn’t look anything like the days of the smokestacks. It tends to be small-scale, with very nimble businesses that tap into the creative class...”

The Paymaster Building (built 1899),
whose windows reflect the wind turbines across the street.

The BNYDC continues to adaptively reuse the yard.  It is expanding its capacity to meet the demand for industrial space, turning massive, currently inoperative warehouses into a sustainable manufacturing center.  The BNYDC is also planning to update the former Naval Hospital Annex, whose hospital and surgeon’s house are both national landmarks, for use as media campus in connection with the production company Steiner Studios.  There is discussion of creating a memorial park at the annex as part of the Brooklyn Greenway, a 14-mile path that will run from Sunset Park to Greenpoint.  Meanwhile, the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at Building 92, a visitor’s center and exhibition space that will examine "the past, present, and future of the BNY and its relationship with the community,” is scheduled to open in the renovated 1857 Marine Commandant’s home in late 2011.

However, historic preservation questions remain.  Developers plan to demolish nine of the eleven dilapidated, but historically-significant, Naval Officers’ Quarters on a six-acre site called Admiral's Row, managed by the National Guard, to build a ShopRite supermarket and a retail center.  (Admiral’s Row is not yet owned by the City, a transaction that would need to take place before redevelopment.)  This $60 million project will provide access to affordable, healthy food and jobs for residents in nearby public housing projects, though preservationists want to protect all of the existing buildings.

While we wait to see the outcome of these contentious issues, I encourage everyone to visit the site.  Tenement Museum members can get 10% off all Urban Oyster tours.

-Posted by Penny

The Closing of Ellis Island

Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island
Tenement Museum (c)1890-1920

As part of our 400 Years of Immigration History campaign on Twitter, we're sharing a timeline of American immigration. Yesterday’s tweet was about the closing of Ellis Island, the famous immigrant station.

Ellis Island opened in 1892 and closed in 1954, with an estimated 12 million immigrants passing through this center during the 62 years it was in service. The peak year of immigration was 1907, with an astounding 1.25 million arrivals. Immigrants disembarking at Ellis Island were subject to health examinations that often determined whether they would be allowed into the country. If an immigrant was considered too ill, there was a hospital complex on the island for treatment. Ellis Island also temporarily housed immigrants because they had to have their identification papers before they could depart.

Former medical building, now abandoned
Tenement.Museum (c) 2009

Ellis Island was not only utilized as an immigration processing center. During World War I, the rate of immigration fell and Ellis Island served as a detainment arena for enemy ships and suspected enemy aliens (the same purpose it served during World War II). Later on, returning injured or sick American soldiers received treatment there. After World War I ended, immigration briefly picked up again, but after 1924 Ellis Island was no longer used for processing immigrants. According to the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, the island was converted into the “center of the assembly, detention, and deportation of aliens who had entered the U.S. illegally or had violated the terms of admittance.” Immigration rates to the United States continued to drop, especially after the Internal Security Act of 1952, which did not allow members of Communist or Fascist groups to enter the United States, and the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952. Ellis Island was closed two years later. [Read more.]

Interior of unrestored medical building,
Tenement.Museum (c) 2009

When most people think of Ellis Island, they imagine the Ellis Island Immigration Museum (you should go if you have never been, it’s excellent!). But Save Ellis Island, a National Park Service partner, is also working to rehabilitate and maintain all of the 29 buildings on the island, including the hospital complex that has fallen into ruins. For more information about Save Ellis Island, read our blog post.

Intrigued? Click here for more blog posts about Ellis Island.

-posted by Devin

Behind the Scenes at the Tenement Museum

Behind the scenes at the Tenement Museum, staffer Melissa gives our hallway "medallion" oil paintings some TLC by removing surface dust with a hake brush and HEPA vacuum. The medallions were added to the hallway c. 1900. The "pastry icing" decoration she is brushing is made of plaster. The scene inside the medallion is an oil painting that was directly applied to the burlap wall covering. You can also see the decorative pressed metal that was applied to the ceiling of the hallway (also c. 1900.)

Preservation News... Landmarks on the Lower East Side?

Jarmulovsky Bank Building, via Greenwich Village Daily Photo.

In July, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission met to discuss landmark designation for 17 individual historic properties, including:

- 143 Allen Street House, at Rivington Street in Manhattan, a two-story intact Federal style residence constructed c. 1831.

- The Hebrew Actors’ Union, at 31 East 7th Street between Second and Third avenues, constructed in the late 19th century

- The former Germania Fire Insurance Company building, at 357 Bowery, south of Cooper Square, a Second Empire style, 3 ½ story building completed in 1870

- 97 Bowery building, near Hester Street, a five-story Italianate commercial structure with a cast-iron façade constructed c. 1869

- Ridley & Sons Department Store, 319-321 Grand Street between Orchard and Allen streets, one of a pair of five-story, cast-iron buildings constructed c. 1886.

- Jarmulowsky Bank, 54 Canal St. at Orchard Street, a 12-story limestone and brick Beaux Arts style building built 1911-1912

You may remember reading about the Jarmulowsky clan in a past blog post. The Ridleys were just as nutty; read about them on the Inside the Apple blog.

The Ridley & Sons Department Store was a major neighborhood landmark, providing jobs for young immigrant women and fashionable clothes for a fraction of the cost of the stores uptown. The large windows are a sign of the times when indoor lighting was minimal. You can also see where the building was chopped up after Allen Street was widened in the early 20th century. All interesting stuff.

Former Ridley Department Store. Note where the arch in the brown windows abruptly ends - the building was sheared off when the El was torn down and the street was widened.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission recently let us know that they've added these properties to the calendar and will review their historic merit at an upcoming meeting. As it turns out, they are discussing Jarmulowsky at a meeting today. Too bad they don't have a live blogger or a Twitter feed... we'll have to wait to find out how it's going.

This is all good news; while the Commission is waiting to review the buildings, the owners can't alter them or tear them down. The Grand Street property that was once Ridley's is currently up for sale, as was Jarmulowsky's in the spring, so it's definitely a positive step for these properties to have protection.

- Posted by Kate Stober

Historic Preservation Update- Syrian Church Granted Landmark Designation

The Landmark's Commission calls St. George's Syrian Catholic Church on Washington Street, which it designated as a historic landmark last month, "the most significant remnant of the Lower Manhattan immigrant enclave known as 'the Syrian Quarter,' the 'Mother Colony' of Syrians and Lebanese in New York." About half of Manhattan's Middle Eastern community, which began settling on the lower west side in the late 1800s, were Melkite Greek Catholics. The church was built in 1812 and served as an immigrant boarding house until the mid 1920s, when it was purchased by a wealthy linen merchant. It was given a stunning neo-Gothic makeover, and served as a center of Melkite worship until the end of World War II, when the neighborhood's Middle Eastern population dwindled. The church currently houses Moran's Restaurant and Bar, whose owners took care to preserve the building's historical facade.


St. George's Church, left, and New York's Syrian Quarter - now TriBeCa and the western half of the Financial District- in the first half of the 20th century.

-posted by Liana Grey

The Battle to Save Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side

If Robert Moses had gotten his way, an extension of 5th Avenue would cut Washington Square Park in half, a whole swath of historic Greenwich Village would be gone, and an elevated expressway would be running through the Lower East Side (perhaps within view of the museum - assuming 97 Orchard wouldn't have been demolished to make way for the highway.)

Luckily, preservationist Jane Jacobs, author of the classic Death and Life of Great American Cities, fought tirelessly against the "power broker's" proposals. (His successful projects included the Triborough Bridge and the Cross-Bronx Expressway.)

A new book about the two adversaries - the David and Goliath, as the New York Times calls them, of lower Manhattan - was reviewed in today's paper; author Andrew Flint will be on hand for an October 8 Tenement Talk.


Moses' plans for a 10-lane highway through lower Manhattan

-posted by Liana Grey

Historic Preservation Society's Oral History Project

In a new oral history project on its website, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which is lobbying for historic district designation for the South Village, looks back over the decades at well-known preservation efforts in the area, including several urban planners' campaigns to prevent Robert Moses from extending Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park.


Washington Square Park in 1950

-posted by Liana Grey

Historic Preservation Update - Manhattan and Brooklyn Buildings Receive Landmark Status

In a single day last week, the Landmarks Commission scheduled hearings on 1,100 buildings seeking landmark designation and took several sites under its wing- a record for the agency that's been protecting New York's historic structures for over four decades, following the demolition of Stanford White's grand, original Penn Station in 1963. On June 23rd, it named an 850-building section of Prospect Heights a historic district, and granted landmark status to several buildings in Manhattan: a four story red brick apartment house on the corner of Greenwich and Rector Streets (built in 1799 as a private residence in what was then one of New York's most fashionable neighborhoods, and converted over the years into a men's boarding house, pub, hotel, and mixed use space), a five and a half story townhouse on East 51st Street occupied at the turn of the century by a wealthy granite contractor, and a 19th century Harlem church. For more details, check out this press release.



Early 20th Century row houses in the newly declared Prospect Heights Historic District

-posted by Liana Grey