Creating Bridget Moore

Education Associate Sarah Litvin spent months preparing for our new "Meet Bridget" tour, which allows school children to visit with a costumed interpreter portraying Irish immigrant Bridget Moore, who lived at 97 Orchard Street in the 1860's. Here, she shares her thoughts on the process of bringing Bridget to life.

To transform the Irish Outsiders tour from a third to a first person narrative, I embarked on a major research project. Not only would our Costumed Interpreters need to know everything about Bridget Moore's experience at 97 Orchard Street, but they would also need to know everything that happened to Bridget up until that point.

Educator Emily Gallagher as Bridget Moore, visiting with school children

To build Bridget's memories,I divided Bridget's life into a few segments, and then learned everything I could about each one.

What was home life like in Ireland when Bridget was growing up? What was the life as a domestic servant like in New York City in the mid-1860s?
What do we know about life as a young married woman in the FIve Points area?
How did Bridget accomplish the day-to-day aspects of life at 97 Orchard Street?

This research then became a sourcebook which each actress training to play Bridget Moore must master.

In addition to building Bridget's memories, we also had to learn how Bridget Moore would have dressed and how she would have spoken. With the help of a fantastic summer intern, Jessica Pushor, and the inimitable scholar of Irish domestics, Margaret Lynch-Brennan, we uncovered some really neat sources.

To learn how Bridget Moore would have dressed, Jessica did extensive research into the dress of Irish peasantry, domestics in New York, and maternity clothing in mid-19th century. She unearthed the below photograph of an Irish domestic, which we used as the primary source to base our Bridget Moore costume.

For language, the source that proved most useful was a novel written in 1861 by Ann Sadlier, a woman who was, herself, an Irish domestic in New York before becoming an author.

The novel, Bessy Conway, is available online for free. It follows a young Irish emigrant from her home in Ardfinnan, County Tipperary, to New York. In her seven year stint as a domestic, Bessy encounters and learns to fight temptation in the big city. As she sees friends fall victim to drink, materialism, and lust around her, Bessy navigates the straight and narrow (and religious!) path. It was a great read and a great source to give insight into the irish immigrant communitiy in New York.

Here are a few choice ninetheenth-century Irish immigrant-isms we dicovered:
P.D.A: "Pour Dire Adieu" (To say godbye)
I don't care a snap: I don't care at all
shin-dig: a party
neither chick nor child: bachelor
astore: my darling
crummy: milk cow
posset: warm drink of sweet and sour milk

--Posted by Education Associate Sarah Litvin

Meeting Bridget Moore



Emily Gallagher as Bridget Moore

On October 24, we'll launch "Meet Bridget" an exciting new program for school groups. On this tour, students will talk with a costumed interpreter portraying Bridget Moore, an Irish immigrant who lived at 97 Orchard Street with her family in the 1860's. If you've taken our tour about the Moore family, you know a bit about Bridget's life already. Here, Educator Emily Gallagher answers a few questions from Bridget's perspective.

You were only 17 when you immigrated to the United States from Ireland. Were you frightened? What were your first impressions of New York City?



I was quite troubled to leave Ireland. I feel my heart could have broken for thinking of my family on that ship and in the early days in New York. Yet it was clear our situation was root, hog, or die.*  Leaving for America was the only way I could spare my family the fortune that it might cost to find me a husband. I come from outside Dublin, where my family and I could barely care for ourselves. When I first arrived off the boat, I was so tired! Yet straightaway I headed to the intelligence office to look for a situation as a domestic. My first years in New York were lived out tired and lonesome in the back of a lady's home, where I learned to cook and clean and be on tap all night and day if the missus needed anything, seven days a week.

Your apartment is so well kept! How do you keep it so clean, living in the city with three children?

It's much easier to keep a home in Kleindeutschland than it was in our previous home, in Five Points. In Five Points our tenement was dilapidated and overcrowded, making it near impossible to be tidy. Here at 97 Orchard Street, Joseph (my husband) and I are feeling blessed to live alone with just our family, in a new and sturdy building. Still, it's quite an effort of sweeping and scrubbing, quite tiresome to haul water and coal up the central stairs with my daughters in tow. When I was a wee lass in Ireland, there was no climbing of stairs or coal dust to sweep, and the wee ones could run outside without risk. Here, Joseph and I are learning to keep our daughters close-- the city is full of dangers for them.

What does your husband do for a living? Was it hard for him to find work when he arrived here from Ireland?

I am quite blessed to have our Joseph, who works as a barkeep back in our old neighborhood. During the season when strong families come to holiday in the City, he also works as a waiter in a popular restaurant. He arrived in New York from Dublin, able to read and write, and was determined to work in a pub. Many of the situations he wanted specified "No Irish" in their want ads, so he had to rely on the community to help him find his position. He is a charming one, and good looking, so eventually a bar owner wanted him to be a part of his business. His situation is quite enviable, he makes a decent wage and works indoors and can eat from the larder there, so I understand that we must do whatever he is asked to keep his relations with his employer. It saddens me that we get so little time together, but I am glad to be the wife of someone of such importance.

I see you have some ingredients for dinner here on the table. What kinds of foods do you and your family eat?

While I'm pleased to live in this new building, it has stretched our budget quite thin. When I worked as a domestic I learned to cook many fine dishes, but because of our expenses here what I can provide for my daughters and Joseph is quite meager. Sometimes Joseph brings me a loaf of bread from the pub, which is a nice treat since we can't quite bake it in these cast iron  stoves. Tonight I am making a stew with a tiny bit of meat I got from a pushcart, carrots and potatoes. We'll drink whatever Joseph brings home in the growler this evening, except for our wee one Agnes, who will drink the milk I purchased from a pushcart this afternoon. Sometimes she fusses so when I feed her, I can't understand it.

 *(1860s phrase meaning to be self-reliant, see here)



Visitors of the Week: Mary, Monica, Sally, Susie, and Connie

From left: Mary, Monica, Sally, Susie and Connie

Hope you've been enjoying this summer's new feature, Visitor of the Week. Each week we've profiled a different person who's been to the Tenement Museum. Stay tuned for more Visitor of the Week profiles this fall. If you're coming to visit and would like to be profiled on the blog, send us an email.

Meet Mary, Monica, Sally, Susie and Connie, our latest Visitors of the Week. This group of five friends, who have known each other for years and are in the same book club, came to visit New York City, and we’re happy that the Tenement Museum was on their list of places to see. Hailing from LaCrosse, Wisconsin, all are teachers except for Susie, who is a nurse. We talked after they had taken the Moores tour.

What part of the tour was most surprising or resonant to you?
The lack of sanitation was appalling. [For example, Bridget Moore may have had to feed her children swill milk, which was unpastuerized and very dangerous. Read more about the sanitation issues of the nineteenth century.] What was also surprising was how much the tour illustrated the books we read, like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Angela’s Ashes. It really depicted the Irish immigrant experience. [Read more about Irish immigration to the United States in the nineteenth century.]

If you lived in a tenement during this time period, what would have been the most difficult part of daily life?
The darkness would have been unbearable. I can’t imagine dealing with the death of a child and the feeling of despair and no way out. The gloominess and having to live in such a cramped space, with constant work over every little thing would make life extremely difficult.

What other places are on your to-do list?
We’re here for five days and we’re doing a historic walking tour, seeing “In the Heights,” renting bikes in Central Park, going to the New York Public Library in midtown Manhattan, taking a food and cultural tour, and going to the Top of the Rock.

-posted by Devin

Announcing the SNAPSHOT! Photo Contest finalists!

Thank you to all of the amazing photographers who joined us for SNAPSHOT! A Tenement Museum Photo Event to celebrate the launch of our new photo database. In case you missed it, on July 20, 2010, photo junkies and Tenement Museum fans were invited into 97 Orchard with their cameras to take photographs of the building's interior (something we normally don’t allow). We received a number of incredible submissions to the SNAPSHOT! Photo Contest, and you can see all of them by visiting the Tenement Museum’s Flickr group.

It was a difficult process, but we managed to select 11 finalists that we think capture the architecture of 97 Orchard and the tenement apartments inside. We hope you will help us pick a grand prize winner by checking out all of the finalists below (click on the thumbnails to view larger images) and voting, on the right, for your favorite!

Voting will end on Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 4:30 pm and the winner will be announced here on Friday, August 6, 2010.

Congratulations to all of the contestants and finalists!

Finalist 1:
Unrestored apartment wall on the fourth floor of 97 Orchard Street. Photo by Dominic Poon.


Finalist 2:
Front room of the recreated Moore Family Apartment exhibit c. 1869 on the fourth floor of 97 Orchard Street. Photo by Kathleen L. Kent.


Finalist 3:
Sewing machine in the front room of the recreated Levine Family Apartment exhibit c. 1897. Photo by Sue Shea.


Finalist 4:
Kitchen of the recreated Levine Family Apartment exhibit c. 1897. on the third floor of 97 Orchard Street. Photo by Shawn Hoke.


Finalist 5:
Kitchen of the recreated Rogarshevsky Family Apartment exhibit c.1915 on the third floor of 97 Orchard Street. Photo by Andrea Gaffney.


Finalist 6:
Antique doll in the recreated Gumpertz Family Apartment exhibit c.1878 on the second floor of 97 Orchard Street. Photo by Dominic Poon.


Finalist 7:
Kitchen in the recreated Gumpertz Family Apartment exhibit c.1878 on the second floor of 97 Orchard Street. Photo by Amy Neiman.


Finalist 8:
Kitchen of the recreated Moore Family Apartment exhibit c. 1869 on the fourth floor of 97 Orchard Street. Photo by Kathleen L. Kent.


Finalist 9:
Front room of the recreated Moore Family Apartment exhibit c. 1869 on the fourth floor of 97 Orchard Street. Photo by Daniel Molina.


Finalist 10:
Kitchen of an unrestored apartment on the second floor of 97 Orchard Street. Photo by Andrea Gaffney.


Finalist 11:
Graffiti on the third floor hallway inside 97 Orchard Street Photo by Shawn Hoke.


-posted by Amita

Meet Katie Barnard, for Live! At the Tenement

Katie Barnard is a costumed interpreter in the Live! At the Tenement program, portraying Bridget Moore. I recently spoke with her both in and out of character.

Jane Ann Veronica Hanraghan (nee Moore)
daughter of Joseph and Bridget Moore.
Courtesy of Tenement Museum Photo Archives

Can you tell me a little bit about who you’re portraying in this program?

I’m portraying Bridget Moore, an Irish immigrant who lived in the building in 1869 with her family.

What responsibilities do you have to keep your character accurate?

Mostly things about correctly portraying what’s good about living here for her but also the truth of her story, which I think is a tumultuous one. The trip across the ocean, leaving the homeland and the famine. What does that turn a person into, if they’ve survived but watched people die because of nothing they can control?

And you want her to seem grateful at the same time.

Exactly. It’s a careful balance. It’s interesting because Bridget is different than a lot of the other characters; this house for her is probably the nicest house she’s ever lived in, aside from when she was a maid.

How do you maintain the interest of your audience?

Well, we only have ten minutes so there’s not really a lot of maintenance that has to be done, but usually connection to the space allows visitors to reference things around them, and then stories and anecdotes to back up the how and why of a particular item. It’s hard because you don’t want to be inaccurate historically but at the same time, you should also seem like a human being. And we have the least information about Bridget Moore [out of all the] characters, so it requires a little artistic license.

Image of Irish emigrants leaving for America (1866).
Courtesy of NYPL Digital Gallery

I think someone in Bridget Moore’s situation would want to entertain, would want to be witty and entertaining with visitors. And I think it’s only in those moments where people ask direct questions about her journey or her homeland that it surprises her a little bit, you know, so that there’s a reaction.

Have you done anything like this costumed interpretation before?

No. I’ve done a lot of acting in general… which is interesting, actually, because in general [when] acting, you’re very specific and accurate. You’re trained to have a lot of research behind you, so costumed interpreting isn’t too far from what you might do if you’re in some sort of play [that’s] set in a different era. I also portray Victoria Confino, [an immigrant who lived in 97 Orchard Street in the 1910s,] in a different program so sometimes my wires get crossed, maintaining the different accents, characters, and time periods. [Laughs.] It gets confusing.

What is the most fun about portraying Bridget Moore?

I think what’s most fun about her are the things that she gets excited about. I imagine from the research that [program coordinator] Sarah Litvin has done, which is brilliant research, we can figure out from the time period what would have been exclusively, like, oh-my-gosh-can-you-believe-I-have-this-thing. So I find the most fun to be figuring out that excitement about something that would seem really trivial to us now. A rug on the floor seems like nothing but to Bridget Moore, that’s a big deal.



Then, program coordinator Sarah Litvin and I met with Bridget Moore…

Could you tell me about yourself, your family, and what you do for a living?

Roger Joseph Hanraghan, husband of Jane.
Courtesy of Tenement Museum Photo Archives

Sure, of course. My name is Bridget Moore. I’ve got a husband Joseph, and I’ve got three wee ones. A girl, Mary Kate. She’s almost four. And a girl, Jane. She’s almost three. And a wee one, Agnes. She was just born, just recently. Joseph works in a saloon, in a pub, you know? Nearby. He does that at night and sometimes during the day. I work here in the house.

How long has your husband been working at the pub?

He’s worked in a pub since I knew him. But he switches from pub to pub depending on the season. Sometimes he works in a hotel, sometimes he works at a pub in the Five Points. It’s depending on whether it’s the busy season or the slow season. He’s got it all figured out.

So he didn’t come to this country with you?

No, no, no. I came here alone when I was wee. I was seventeen or so.

How would you describe your experience since you arrived in the city? How is life in the tenement?

I think it’s pretty nice. The only thing I don’t like so much is slaggin’ all the stairs, you know? You’ve got to climb all the stairs. We don’t have that. When I was in Ireland, it was very different. We were all on the one floor and there was one room and that was it. It’s very complicated with all the stairs and the rooms and all that. And you’ve got to climb the stairs many times in a day because you’ve got to go down there to get water. The well is down out behind the building. But when I first got here, I was a little bit intimidated cause I came from a farm. When you come from a farm, and ya’ arrive in a place like New York, it’s very strange. There’s a lot people from all over. No one in this neighborhood speaks the same language I do, and I had to get really used to that. We’ve only been here a little while in the neighborhood. When you live in the Five Points, it’s a little bit like being in Dublin, I hear. But I don’t know. [Laughs.]

Do you feel you have a strong sense of community here now? Or does it still feel foreign to you?

No, it’s alright. It’s different because my community at home is my family. And here, you learn to make family where you can. I’ve got friends at the church.

So if you could change one thing about the tenement, what would it be? Would it be having to go down all those stairs for water?

It would be the stairs! [Laughs.] But there are other things too, y’know. It’s so dark. I’d like a few more lamps, but right now we don’t have enough money to get them.

SL: Is there anything you do to try to make use of the light you have?

There is. You know, I learned about something. Can I tell you it? When I was uptown, they would say, to make the room make a little bit brighter and larger… they’re always worried uptown about making everything bigger than it is. So they tell you you’ve got to put glass on the wall. Now this is very strange, and Joseph doesn’t like it at all because in Ireland, if you look in the glass, they think you go to the next world. So there’s a lot of worry, but I said, “If you’re in America, you’ve got to put the glass on the wall because here it’s so dark and you’ve got so little space that if you put the glass on the wall like this [points to the mirror hanging on the mantle], it makes it feel bigger and brighter.

Roger Joseph and Jane Hanraghan (nee Moore)
Courtesy of Tenement Museum Photo Archives

What are your hopes for the future in the next couple of years here?

It’s hard to say. This is a pretty nice place so if we could maintain it, that’d be great. If we could get a little more light and stay, that’d be wonderful. [Laughs.] But the only problem is Joseph gets a little restless because there’s no one here from Ireland except one pair upstairs. So he wants to go back to the Five Points, but if I have my way, I don’t think so.


Meet Katie Barnard tomorrow at Live! at the Tenement's evening bash, 6:30 PM at the Museum Shop, 108 Orchard Street.

- Posted by Joe Klarl

Visitor of the Week: Jill Montgomery

Over the summer, look out for this new feature - Visitor of the Week! Each week we'll profile a different person who's been to the Tenement Museum. If you're coming to visit and would like to be profiled on the blog, send us an email.

Meet Jill Montgomery, a recent visitor of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. She resides in Las Vegas, Nevada and works as an administrative assistant. Jill, along with her parents, included a visit to the Tenement Museum as part of their New York City trip because they had heard great recommendations from friends.

The Montgomerys took the Moores tour, which was pertinent to them since Jill’s father’s side of the family emigrated from Ireland to the United States. After taking the tour, Jill was very moved by the difficulties of tenement life in the nineteenth century.

“We’re so used to our daily lives,” Jill reflected. “We know what we’ll eat and drink. For them, it was a concern figuring out what was safe. It was a daily struggle.”

Jill was also interested to learn about the lack of healthy food options for infants. Most people in the mid-19th century knew that certain foods were dangerous or could even cause fatalities but often had to consume whatever was available.

“The swill milk reminded me of a part in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” Jill commented. “I had never heard of it before then. It’s interesting how it became a term. Back then people referred to it as ‘swill,’ but they still had to drink it.”

(Swill milk came from cows fed distillery waste. It was often adulterated with substances like chalk or ammonia. Unfortunately, this was the milk product that was most often sold in the working-class districts of Manhattan. [Read more.] Not much changed until the late 19th century.)

As they left the Museum Shop, Jill and her family were planning on visiting the famous Katz’s Deli. In addition to their Irish heritage, the family also has Eastern-European connections, and they wanted to try some pierogies and borscht. They were also looking forward to visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art before heading home to the Midwest.

-posted by Devin

Tenement as Art?

A while back, we were approached by Irish artist Jennifer Walshe about working together on an art project. Jennifer's work is fairly complex and conceptual and so a bit hard to explain - read more in this Village Voice profile.

For an upcoming exhibit at the Chelsea Art Museum, she wanted to photograph small sculptures - what she calls "sound reliquaries" - in the rooms of the Moore family apartment. The reliquaries are created with different found objects, and in the middle of each is a  bubble "containing" a sound from Ireland - ice cracking on the river, a voice telling stories by the fire.

At the exhibit are the reliquaries as well as photos of them in situ in the Moore apartment. With her work Jennifer is exploring traditional aspects of Irish culture in new ways.

The exhibit is up from April 15 - May 15, so stop by to check it out.

Chelsea Art Museum
556 West 22nd Street
Tuesday through Saturday 11am to 6pm
Thursday 11am to 8pm

Photos courtesy artist / Chelsea Art Museum

Questions for Curatorial... New York Irish History

A while back I gave a Moore tour and was asked some questions I couldn't answer. As a responsible educator, I went back to the office and talked to our Curatorial Director, Dave Favaloro. So, if you happened to take my tour a few weeks ago and are faithfully reading the blog... here's what you wanted to know!

- Kate

1. Do we know if the other Moore daughters who died are formally, properly buried like baby Agnes?

Yes, all of the Moore children, as well as Bridget and Joseph, are buried in a family plot, which was purchased in April 1869 following Agnes’ death.


2. Were many middle or upper-class Irish moving to New York at the same time as Famine victims?

While few middle or upper-class Irish immigrated to New York during the 1840s and 1850s, by the mid-19th century, the city was home to an Irish community that according to historian Hasia Diner, “contained many economic layers,” including unskilled laborers and skilled craftsmen, as well as the more settled, affluent descendants of earlier Irish immigrants – merchants, physicians, lawyers, and teachers.


3. During the mid-19th century, did people from Northern Ireland immigrant to New York?
 
Although the majority of Irish immigrants who settled in New York during the 18th century were Protestants from Northern Ireland, by the mid-19th century, their numbers paled in comparison to Catholics from the south and west of Ireland.


4. What was the relationship between Catholic and Protestant Irish immigrants in the 19th century?

By the mid-19th century, Catholic Irish vastly outnumbered Protestant Irish in New York City. Relations between the two groups were generally adversarial, and sometimes hostile and even violent.

The worst episodes of violence between Catholic and Protestant Irish in these years were the Orange and Green Riots of 1870 and 1871. In 1870, eight people were killed when outraged Catholics protested during the annual July 12 Boyne Day march, held by Protestant Irish Orangemen to celebrate the victory of Prince William of Orange over Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

Tensions within the Irish community had been building for years, as Protestants argued against the Catholic "threat" to American values and their "inability to be good citizens." The following year, plans for the march coincided with the first revelations of the Tweed Ring scandal, in which Boss Tweed and his Tammany followers had taken millions of dollars from the city in political graft. Rumors of violence on both sides prompted the state to provide the marchers with military and police protection, despite attempts by Mayor A. Oakley Hall to ban the parade.

In 1871, threats of violence proved correct when crowds of Catholic Irish lining the parade route along Eighth Avenue began throwing rocks at the marchers. In response, the military accompaniment began to shoot indiscriminately into the crowd, killing sixty-two, mainly Catholics. While the 1871 riot was the last major outbreak of violence against Irish Catholics, Orangemen continued to march for several more years and join organizations like the American Protective Association that espoused nativist ideals.

A New Oral History of Life at 97 Orchard Street

Derya and Dave in the Curatorial Department give an update on their recent research:

Last Friday we trekked to Vorhees, New Jersey to interview Jaqueline Burinescu Richter, who was born in 97 Orchard Street in 1919. Ms. Richter remembered many things about her days as a girl at 97 Orchard Street, including stories about the Katz sisters and Mrs. Rosenthal, who cleaned the building.

Visitors might remember that Ruth Katz's name is scrawled on a fourth-floor apartment wall and that Fannie was in charge of 97 Orchard Street from 1918 to 1941. The family changed their name from Rogarshevsky to Rosenthal, and while we use the former name on the tour, Ms. Richter would have remembered her as Mrs. Rosenthal.

Ms. Richter also told a story about going to the bath houses on Allen Street as a girl and hiding behind a wall when people came to check the tickets because she wanted to stay there longer than her ticket permitted.

Ms. Richter’s father died during the 1918 flu pandemic. Here is a photo of him that was made into cufflinks!

Ms. Richter was a very friendly girl and knew everyone who lived in the building. She introduced her mother to John Fiorentino, an immigrant from Malta who lived on the fifth floor. Eventually her mother and John were married in 1929.

The family also has a trunk that was used by Ms. Richter’s mother or father when they immigrated to America. She is interested in donating to the museum. We will keep you updated as we learn more.

- Posted by Derya Golpinar and Dave Favaloro

Schneider's Saloon Update - Horse Hair

Paint and wallpaper samples are still in the lab, and a search beneath the linoleum floors turned up nothing. So the mystery remains: what did Schneider's Saloon, the pub in 97 Orchard's basement, once look like? We do know that a staircase once abutted a portion of the north side of the center partition, and that the other section may have been constructed at a different time. To learn more, project manager Chris Neville pulled back a strip of pressed metal wall covering (installed before the museum was established; we're still trying to figure out when), revealing scorched dry wall and plaster studded with horse hair. A fire had burned in the room at some point, damaging the material, and as for the hair - it was mixed in to prevent the plaster from cracking. When we were restoring an apartment once occupied by the Moores, a family of Irish immigrants, our conservationist made sure to follow this traditional practice, using hair from his daughter's horse.


A bag of horse hair was mixed into the Moore apartment's plaster

-posted by Liana Grey

Photos of a Tenement Museum

Have you visited us on Flickr?

Visitors are often disappointed to know they can't take photographs inside the Museum. So for the past two years we've been posting images of our museum and its exhibits for you to download.

Last year, when we launched The Moores: An Irish Family in America, we posted a many-months-long series on the restoration process on the 4th and 5th floors of 97 Orchard Street. These images give you a sense of how we turn a dilapidated space into something haunting, powerful, and hopefully educational.

As we renovate 103 Orchard Street, home of the Museum's future visitor center, we will upload our progress. You can follow along as we transform the storefont and second floors of the building.

We are also posting photos from Tenement Talks - writers, storytellers, and filmmakers from across the city. See if anyone you know has visited. We may also have a signed book or two lying around - call our Museum Shop for info on any specific event (212-982-8420).