Update from 103 Orchard: New Technology for Accessibility

At the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, we’re accustomed to peeling back plaster and lath to inspect and date the pipes and wires we find inside. But this month, we’re the ones leaving clues for future urban archeologists.

Threading induction loops through the ceiling at 103 Orchard Street

In preparing our new Visitors Center at 103 Orchard Street, we’re adding all sorts of wires for new technologies. We’ll have “smart classrooms” on the second floor and a high-tech projector in our new cinema space. Most recently, we added several induction loops that will assist visitors who wear hearing aides.

Induction Loops are a technology that uses a loop—really a wire surrounding an area—to create a magnetic signal that hearing aid wearers can “pick up” wirelessly. This signal helps clear up the interference of a busy or crowded room such as our shop and Visitors Center by transmitting sound directly from an audio source to a person’s hearing aid by way of a telecoil or “t-coil” receiver.

In our current Visitors Center, we have induction loops installed at our ticketing and retail counters. In our new space, we will have a loop around the cinema where our film about Lower East Side history plays. A fourth loop will encircle the area where evening Tenement Talks are held. The system is complex, but its result is beautifully simple: vastly improved experiences for every visitor who uses a hearing aide.

At the Tenement Museum, we’re always looking for new ways to improve accessibility and open our ongoing dialogue to as many visitors as possible. To learn more about induction loops, and where else you can find them in New York, e-mail Sarah Litvin, our Education Associate in charge of Access.

Accessibility at the Tenement Museum

We love a good conversation here at the Tenement Museum. In fact, we learn something new every time a visitor shares their own family story. To keep the dialogue going strong, we want to make the museum accessible to as many people as possible. This spring, we’re announcing two new initiatives which will go a long way toward this goal.

Starting in May, we’ll be launching a series of Tenement Talks with Open Captioning—a service that provides real-time captions displayed on a large screen in conjunction with the spoken presentation. These captions are great for audience members with any degree of hearing impairment.

Later this year, we’ll also be launching our new Shop Life exhibition, which explores the history of the retail spaces on the street level of 97 Orchard Street. Though the upper floors of the historic tenement will remain inaccessible to wheel chairs and folks who don’t climb stairs, we’ll be able to install a lift for access to the new exhibit—making it the first accessible building tour at 97 Orchard!

These programs and others are coordinated by the Museum’s Education Associate for Program Development, Sarah Litvin. Sarah also oversees the series of ASL tours given by Educator Alexandria Wailes and Touch Tours lead by educators trained in verbal description for visitors who are blind or have low vision. She also coordinates walking and virtual tours for those who use wheelchairs, and she’s currently working on making our school group programming suitable and adaptable for students on the autism spectrum.

Click here for a short video introduction to our ASL Tours with Alexandria.


“Working to create accessible programming in a building that’s dim, cramped, and noisy is certainly a challenge.” says Sarah. “We’re always learning from visitors, advisors, and colleagues and we’ve applied what we’ve learned to improve the museum experience for all visitors.”

For example, our educators now pass around handling objects and offer large-scale images to illustrate tours. They’re also trained not to speak with the lights out. These changes are applied to all tours, not just those with visitors who have told us they’re blind or hard of hearing.

If you have any questions or suggestions about accessibility at the Tenement Museum, post your comment here or send Sarah a note at Slitvin@tenement.org

Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month

October is Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month, when museums and cultural organizations across the country make a special effort to encourage visitorship among people who are blind and low vision. As you might imagine, this is a population who has been underserved historically by museums.

Already this month, two Tenement educators have reported that they had visitors with low vision on their tours, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum is one of 200 organizations holding a special event to welcome this population into our museum.

On October 18th, the Tenement Museum will offer a touch and verbal description tour of our newest program, The Moores: An Irish Family in America. Experience the heart of the immigrant saga through the music of Irish America, then tour the restored home of the Moore family, Irish-Catholic immigrants coping with the death of a child in 1869. Compare the Moore's struggle to keep their family healthy with that of the Katz family, Russian-Jewish immigrants who left their mark on our building in the 1930s.

The 1.5 hour tour will begin at the Museum’s Visitor Center at 108 Orchard Street at 2:45 p.m. on Sunday, October 18th. Tickets cost $20 for adults and $15 for students and seniors.

To attend, purchase tickets by Wednesday, October 14th from Sarah Litvin, Education Associate for Living History and Access: Slitvin (at) tenement.org, 212-431-0233 ext. 232.

You can learn more on our accessibility page: http://www.tenement.org/vizinfo_ada.html.

- Posted by Sarah Litvin

American Sign Language tour - This Sunday!

Join us this Sunday for:

American Sign Language (ASL) interpreted tour,
Getting By: Immigrants Weathering Hard Times

Sunday, September 27 at 1:00 PM

Discover how immigrants survived economic depressions at 97 Orchard Street between 1863 and 1935. Visit the restored homes of the German-Jewish Gumpertz family, whose patriarch disappeared during the Panic of 1873, and the Italian-Catholic Baldizzi family, who lived through the Great Depression. This tour lasts 60 minutes. Recommended for ages 8 & up.

Tickets: www.tenement.org or call 212-431-0233 ext. 232 or TTY 212-431-0714. ADVANCE TICKETS RECOMMENDED – tour size is limited. Program starts at the Museum Visitor Center, 108 Orchard Street at Delancey. Subway: F/J/M to Delancey/Essex. Bus: M15 to Delancey.

More ASL programs to come in October and November.

Tomorrow at the Museum - ASL Immigrant Soles Walking Tour

Join us tomorrow at 1 pm outside the Visitor's Center (108 Orchard Street) for an American Sign Language interpreted tour of the Lower East Side. We'll walk past places where 19th century immigrants worshipped, worked, played, and went to school. ASL tours are usually the first Sunday of every month. Check out our tours page for more info.

-posted by Liana Grey

This weekend at the Tenement Museum - ASL and Walking Tour

Two great programs at the Museum this weekend:

Join us Sunday, April 5 for an American Sign Language interpreted tour. The 1:15 PM The Moores: An Irish Family in America tour will be accompanied by an ASL interpreter and is open to all. If you'd like to make reservations for this special tour, which we offer the first Sunday of every month, contact Sarah at 212-431-0233 ext. 232.


This weekend we're also launching Immigrant Soles, a new neighborhood walking tour. The 90 minute tours focuses on the daily experiences and challenges of the neighborhood’s immigrant residents, visiting places where they ate, studied, worshipped, and lived. It’s a wonderful overview of the social history of the district. You can read a review on the Moving Sidewalk blog.



One of the coolest things about the tour is learning where Mr. Confino had his apron factory (Allen Street), where Mr. Rogarshevsky's funeral parlor was located (just down Orchard), and where Josephine Baldizzi went to elementary school (PS 42 on Hester Street). It's fun to see our historical tenants out of 97 Orchard and out in the streets and factories where they spent much of their time.



Immigrant Soles is offered Saturday and Sunday at 1 PM. (Look for it twice daily by summertime.) The walking tour is a great companion to a building tour, expanding upon the stories and policies we talk about at 97 Orchard Street.



For tickets, see the online calendar, or call 866-811-4111. For more information, please feel free to call the Museum at 212-431-0233.

American Sign Language Tenement Tours

March 1 at 1:00 PM, 108 Orchard Street

Join us this Sunday for an ASL-interpreted Confino Family Living History Tour. You'll visit the apartment of a Sephardic Jewish family and meet a costumed interpreter playing 14-year-old Victoria Confino, who lived in the tenement in 1916. Visitors take on the role of newly arrived immigrants and ask Victoria questions about adjusting to life on the Lower East Side. Designed for families, but enjoyable and educating for everyone, this tour allows visitors to handle household objects. 60 minutes, Ages 5 & up.

The tour will be led by an educator and interpreted by Drew Sachs.

More information is available at http://www.tenement.org/tours.html.

Advance tickets are strongly recommended; please call Sarah at 212-431-0233 ext. 232/ TTY 212-431-0714 or email signlanguage(at)tenement org.

ASL-interpreted tours are usually offered the first Sunday of every month; tours rotate. Our next tour will be April 5 at 1:15 PM. Join us as we explore life among the early Irish immigrants to New York, as well as living conditions in immigrant housing, on The Moores: An Irish Family in America.