Our Neighbor on Broome Street

THIRTEEN / WNET has a web series called City Concealed, in which they visit lesser-known New York landmarks. Their latest video concerns the Kehila Kedosha Janina synagogue here on Broome Street. Since 1927, the temple has been the spiritual home of the Lower East Side's Romaniote Jews, who came from the town of Ioannina (Yanina / Janina) in Greece. Neither Ashkenazi not Sephardic, this group has their own language and cultural traditions, although they worship in much the same way that all Jews do.

My favorite part of the video comes as the congregation members are discussing the foods of their culture, naming them one by one. As they get to fasolia, which someone says means "beans," congregation member Jerry Pardo interjects his own very personal memory of the dish:

"Fasolia's not just beans. Fasolia is your mother in the kitchen, five o'clock in the morning, Friday morning, with a cigarette hanging outta her mouth, and the beans are on the stove. They're simmering, and they're simmering, and they're simmering, and they're simmering, and there's pieces of lamb in it - the one that your father sucks the middle out of it, the marrow."

This dish isn't just some pot of beans - it embodies his mother's labor and love, her devotion to her culture and her family, and the special work she put into the weekly Sabbath meal.



The City Concealed: Kehila Kedosha Janina from Thirteen.org on Vimeo.

The synagogue is open for services and also open Sundays for guided tours of their small museum. Check it out next time you're in the neighborhood.

- Posted by Kate

A Model Visitor

Over the summer, a crew shooting photos for the Bloomingdale's fall catalog came through the Lower East Side. One of their stops was the Tenement Museum Shop and Visitor Center at 108 Orchard. This very tall model made like she was browsing books and postcards. It was pretty impressive - they managed to get their shots in about 30 minutes, all while regular Museum visitors were buying tickets and doing their own book browsing. She actually looks like the sort of Lower East Side girl who would be into our Joli jewelry or the photography art books.

See more of their Lower East Side adventures in the catalog, which I'm sure you can pick up at Bloomingdale's.

Food Wars @ 97 Orchard Street

A few months ago the Travel Channel show "Food Wars" filmed a scene at the Tenement Museum. For the episode pitting the pastrami of Second Avenue Deli against that of Katz's, the producers wanted a "meeting of the minds" to take place somewhere on the Lower East Side - a place where the owners of the two restaurants could meet to discuss the rules of the contest. Because of our connection to the history of the neighborhood, the Tenement Museum was a perfect choice!

Any film or tv producers out there who might be reading this know that it's pretty hard to shoot inside 97 Orchard Street. For one thing, it's dark - almost every film shoot requires extra lighting. It's also busy all day, every day, with the hundreds of school kids, tour groups, and public visitors who come to see the museum daily. For a film crew with a tight schedule, that usually means we can't accommodate the production. But for the "Food Wars" crew, we worked out a great alternative - filming on the roof!

You can see in the background the lovely streetscape of Allen Street. It was cold and rainy the day we filmed - you can see the talent wearing plastic rain smocks and carrying umbrellas - but the crew pushed through and got the scene they needed. It was fun to meet the owners & operators of both iconic delis, who swapped gossip about other restaurateurs, DOH inspections, and the Lower East Side back in the day.

You can watch some video snippets from the episode here, and catch the show on The Travel Channel to find out who won the big showdown!

- posted by Kate

Recent Press

A great look into the Museum from WCBS Morning News...

Watch this at WCBS News Radio 880

More Famous Mucisians in 97 Orchard Street

Some folks took an interest in #17 on our list of "20 Things You Don't Know About the Tenement Museum." Yup, Metallica did have a photo shoot here. 

That would be Lars Ulrich in the second floor ruin.

On the second floor landing, by the stairs.

There's no record of which magazine published these photos (my file has disappeared), but it was probably in May or June 2004, which means the shoot likely took place several months earlier. Perhaps a reader recognizes the photos and can tell us which photographer it was, or an old Tenement staffer will come forward with some memories of this particular adventure?

Other stars have spent time here, too.

This is Ryan Adams in Q magazine, September 2003 (photographs by Chris Buck). I have no idea what he's doing, but he's standing in front of one of eight painted medallions that line the first floor hallway of 97 Orchard Street. They were likely added around 1905, when the entry way was refurbished with the addition of tile flooring, pressed metal ceilings, and painted burlap wall covering. The refurbishment also corresponded to the year when indoor toilets and an air shaft were installed in the tenement (they were mandated by law in 1901 with the Tenement House Act). 

Visitors - and indeed early researchers working on this building - were surprised to find such intricate painting in working-class housing. Around the time these were painted, our block of Orchard Street was probably the most densely populated place in the world. And yet, poignantly, our artist painted bucolic rural scenes on each of these circles. The one behind Ryan Adams' head has been left under a layer of grime, coal dust, and New York City dirt, but we've restored another in the hallway and you can see a small cottage in a field, looking rather like a little farm from the old country.

For the record, this is the Confino family apartment, in which visitors are allowed to sit on chairs and touch objects. Even stars are not allowed to touch collection objects in regular apartments. Don't do this on a regular tour! You shouldn't operate a Victrola yourself without proper training, either - they can be easily broken. It was probably easier to find a Victrola repair man in 1916 than it is today (just ask Derya, our collections manager, who is in charge of fixing ours when it breaks down. Thank goodness that Waves LLC is right here in Manhattan).

Why are photgraphers so interested in 97 Orchard Street? I guess they like the historical fabric as much as we do. So many interesting colors and textures to play off... there are a hundred million stories you can imagine taking place in this building. The stories we tell on our tours are just a handful of possibilities...

- Posted by Kate

Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags

Tonight HBO will be broadcasting a new documentary called "Schmatta: Rags To Riches To Rags." While the film tells the story of the rise of New York's Garment District, it will also be focusing on its decline. The garment industry, which had once been a microcosm of economic and social forces, is now on the verge of disappearing. For instance, in 1965 the U.S. manufactured 95% of America's clothing. Today that number is down to 5%.

In case you would like to read more or watch the preview, see:
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/schmatta/index.html

- Posted by Rachel

We're on TV!

We often get requests to film at the Tenement Museum. Usually we host news or documentary shows that want to feature the Museum or discuss life for immigrant and working-class people around the turn of the century.

For instance, the History Detectives filmed an interview with historian Daniel Sawyer in 97 Orchard Street's first floor parlor for a show dealing with Jewish immigration. A pending program about water and sanitation for the History Channel used our rear yard to illustrate conditions for the average urban resident in 1870.

My favorite pieces, of course, are those that deal with the Museum's history and mission. Here's a segment that aired recently (Provided by Time Warner Cable Staten Island):



Here's another one that I particularly like (and not because I'm in it!). We filmed this early on a winter morning last year and were able to get some beautiful shots. The host was so engaged with the stories that we tell and clearly loved being at the Museum (there are also segments on Lower East Side standbys Katz's, Russ & Daughters, and Economy Candy on YouTube).



Sometimes a production company will use our space as representative of someone else's life entirely. Earlier this year a British crew came to the Museum for a documentary about Jack the Ripper. After they filmed a series of interviews in the apartments and hallways, we had to turn off all the lights so the "investigator" (actual former cold-case cop Ed Norris) could shine his flashlight around an eerily-dark 97 Orchard.

Last night we used the Baldizzi apartment as a stand-in for where Andy Warhol lived in Pittsburgh. He was the son of Slovak immigrants and grew up in a working-class neighborhood in the 1930s & 40s. Although we carefully create our exhibit spaces to represent the world of one particular family, to a production crew, we're a ready-made set that can be adapted to their needs. This particular group even wanted to bring acting cats in (apparently the Warholas had a lot and they inspired Andy's cat artwork) but that fell through (apparently acting cats are expensive!).

- Posted by Kate Stober

Tenement Talks on YouTube

It's still a work in progress, but we finally have a place to share Tenement Talks footage. So far, content includes Jeffrey Ruhalter's lecture about his butcher shop at Essex Street Market, and book talks by authors Colum McCann and Erin Einhorn. Feel free to post suggestions in the comment section below.




-Posted by Liana Grey

Tenement Talks at BookTV.org

A few of our Tenement Talks have been filmed for CSPAN's Book TV, and they're available for online viewing.

Andrew Ross, author of Nice Work if You Can Get It, speaks about labor in America today. Originally aired May 10, 2009. Event took place on April 22, 2009.

Samuel D. Kassow, author of Who Will Write Our History, shares the amazing story of Emanuel Ringelblum, a Polish historian who recorded and secreted thousands of records of Jewish life in the Warsaw Ghetto. Originally aired February 21, 2009. Event took place on February 3, 2009.

Jay Dolan, author of The Irish Americans, gives an overview of this group's history, from the famine ships to JFK. Originally aired January 2, 2009. Event took place on November 11, 2008.

Night Shoot at the Museum

A late-night shoot at 97 Orchard Street for a Canadian documentary, airing this October...

June 9, 2009

-posted by Kate Stober

Tenement Talks on TV (And Our Website!)

Earlier this month, C-Span aired NYU professor Andrew Ross' discussion on job instability in an increasingly globalized (and, thanks to the current downturn, shrinking) economy. His book, Nice Work if You Can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times, addresses why people are forced to change jobs so frequently these days. Watch the video clip here. And since C-Span only covers the occassional talk, check out the podcasts on our website if you'd like to catch up on others.

In other Tenement Talks news, folk artist Chris Lowe has posted the two songs ("Downtown" and "The Muse of Jones Alley") that inspired the theme of tonight's Lower East Side Stories installment on his Myspace page. Lowe will be performing live at the event.

TM on TV

Last month, the museum got its fifteen minutes of fame on television. (Almost literally. Just add up the lengths of the clips we're featured in.) Actress Lauren Ambrose told NBC's First Look that she fell in love with 97 Orchard while preparing for her role in Awake & Sing, a Lincoln Center production about a Jewish family struggling through the Great Depression, and now counts TM as one of the top three things she can't live without.

A recent PBS Sunday Arts profile gave a great behind-the-scenes look at our history and mission. And Columbia University's Uptown Radio covered "Coping While Broke," an April installment of our Lower East Side Stories series. Listen to museum educator Max Weissberg discuss the Yiddish term "luftmensch" and its relevance to economic downturns.

A tour of 97 Orchard helped Lauren Ambrose research immigrant life during the Great Depression for the play Awake and Sing

Tenement on Today

Happy St. Patrick's Day to our readers! The Today Show did two episodes yesterday and today all about Ireland and Irish-Americans. One segment, an interview with writer Peter Quinn, was filmed at the Tenement Museum. Although we suggested the restored Moore family apartment, which depicts the living spaces of an Irish family in 1869, the crew chose the Baldizzi apartment (a Sicilian-Catholic family's living spaces from 1935). The average viewer can't tell the difference, and the crew only had to lug their equipment up to the second floor instead of the fourth. Such is the magic of television.

Check out the segment here. You can catch the other segments, including one on our President's Irish ancestry, on The Today Show website.

TM - On Location with the History Detectives

Last year, PBS's History Detectives set out to solve the mystery of a Connecticut farmhouse owned by a string of Eastern-European families during the late 19th and early 20th centuries (the height of Jewish immigration to the New York area). Why, they wondered, did the house change hands so many times? The detectives conducted one of their interviews - with NYU professor David Sawyer -here at the museum. Prof. Sawyer explained the appeal of the Connecticut countryside to Eastern European Jews crammed in the Lower East Side. The History Detectives posted this cool behind-the-scenes photo of the interview on their Flikr page:



(This is the front parlor space of 97 Orchard Street, at stoop level. It's where we host the Kitchen Conversations program as well as Rooms for Rent space rentals.)

Tenement Talks - Who Will Write Our History?

A few weeks ago Samuel Kassow shared the remarkable history of the Oyneg Shabes, who secretly recorded Jewish life in the Warsaw Ghetto from 1940 to 1943, with our Tenement Talks audience.

His talk will appear on Book TV this Saturday and Sunday, February 21 and 22. Check your local listings and see the Book TV website for more details.

Tenement Talks - Samuel Kassow Interviewed on NPR

Only hours before speaking at the museum, Trinity College history professor Samuel Kassow discussed his latest book, Who Will Write Our History, on the Leonard Lopate show. The book chronicles a group of Jewish scholars' efforts to record life in Nazi-occupied Poland by burying thousands of artifacts in boxes and cans. Check out the interview below.