A Building With a Past: the Many Lives of 103 Orchard

If you’ve been following the construction of our new visitor and education center at 103 Orchard Street, then you know the interesting history of the building and some of its past tenants. It seems like everything in the Lower East Side has a back story, and 103 Orchard is no exception!

With this in mind, it comes as no surprise that the building has significantly changed over time, evolving from 3 independent old law tenement buildings positioned in the middle of the block into one corner building. Through it all, 103 Orchard Street has witnessed the ongoing transformation of the neighborhood for well over a century, through cycles of boom and bust, expansion and contraction.

What is now 103 Orchard was originally built in 1888 as 103, 105, and 107 Orchard Street. These buildings were located in the center of block, sandwiched between others on each side.

103, 105 and 107 Orchard circa 1888

When Delancey Street was widened in 1903 to create a larger thoroughfare for traffic to the new Williamsburg Bridge, 109, 111, and 113 Orchard Street were demolished, making 107 Orchard Street the corner building.

103, 105 and 107 Orchard circa 1903

The most significant change came between 1913 and 1916 when the front halves of 103, 105, and 107 Orchard Street were combined to create one tenement building. At the same time, the rear halves of all three were demolished, clearing space for a new building to house a branch of the Bank of the United States facing Delancey Street at the rear of the merged lots.

103, 105 and 107 Orchard circa 1913-1916

When Allen Street was widened between 1930 and 1934, the tenements on the other side of the bank were removed, exposing the side wall of the bank and effectively changing the entire neighborhood.

103, 105 and 107 Orchard circa 1930-1934

Once again, 103 Orchard Street is changing, and so is the neighborhood. In July the Tenement Museum’s new Visitor and Education Center will officially open to the public, representing the historical memory of 103 Orchard Street and the ongoing evolution that makes the Lower East Side such an exciting place to be.

A Rendering of the new Visitor Center at 103 Orchard

Why Architecture Matters with Paul Goldberger

“Like the best art criticism, the education of Goldberger's eye explains much of what one feels but had not fully understood in looking at them.” -- John Berridge

We all need a place to sleep; it seems like one of the most basic needs—shelter.

Paul Goldberger discusses the places in which we shelter, work and play. He discusses when architecture is necessary and aesthetic, and goes beyond necessity to architechture’s function, sustainability, beauty and effect on our emotions. So we all need, want and like architecture—but do we need criticism?

Right before the Tenement Talk with Paul Goldberger, and as guests streamed in and took their seats Paul looked carefully at the Tenement Museum’s books, toys and cultural objects. He stood in front of the shelves, diving into the details and continued that scrutiny until right before the Talk began. Mr Goldberger is known for this detailed observation as a writer and architecture critic, from his work at the New York Times to his “Skyline” column in The New Yorker. The Talk began. There was laughter and detailed answers to complex questions related to his work as a critic. As he spoke, the detail and description he provided about buildings like those at Astor Place or Columbus Circle displayed a never-ending search for the specific ideas embedded in architecture and which his criticism aims to illuminate.

Architecture matters for a variety of reasons: because of need, function, beauty and even emotion. The discerning and critical eye of writers like Goldberg bring those reasons to the forefront and draw our attention inward to the ways architecture makes us feel and upward to the buildings themselves.

Criticism comes in many forms, including humor. In the clip below from The Colbert Report, Paul Goldberger and Stephen Colbert trade criticisms, and jokes about Why Architecture Matters.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Paul Goldberger
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Posted by Patricia Pforte

Questions for Curatorial: What's the Deal with that Sheet Metal?

Curatorial Director Dave answers your questions. If you have a question for Dave, email us.

What are the metal ceilings in 97 Orchard Street made of, when were they installed, and why did the landlord chose to put them up?

The ceilings in the hallways throughout 97 Orchard Street are covered in pressed metal, made from an alloy of steel and iron. These ceilings were installed circa 1900. Metal ceilings were popular because they were easier to maintain than easily damaged plaster. Different patterns are visible in the halls of 97 Orchard Street, since sections were often patched with a piece of metal that did not match the original.



Photo by aeg7, Tenement Museum Flickr pool




Photo by barbarakrasner, Tenement Museum Flickr pool.




Photo by nycshushi51065, Tenement Museum Flickr pool



97 Orchard Street's Decor and Architecture

What is the architectural detail on the façade, archways, and cornices of the buildings?

The front façade of 97 Orchard Street is an extremely simple version of the Italianate style, the most popular style for buildings erected in New York City during the early 1860s.
By the time 97 Orchard Street was built, the Italianate style, featuring arched openings for doors and windows, projecting stone lintels (a supporting wood or stone beam across the top of an opening, such as that of a window or door or fireplace), and foliate brackets (decorated with carved leaves), had filtered down to even the most modest projects. At 97 Orchard Street, the brick façade of the upper floors is ornamented by segmental-arch window openings (the circular arch above each window in which the inner circle is less than a semicircle) with brownstone trim. An Italianate projecting-metal cornice caps the façade and is coated with brownstone-colored sand paint.

What do we know about the wallpaper in 97 Orchard Street?

Around 1905, the main hall on the first floor was redesigned with the addition of an inexpensive, but durable covering of burlap painted red, and later shellacked with a brown varnish. In the late 1880s, wallpaper began to replace paint on the front room walls of apartments in 97 Orchard Street. We believe the landlord arranged for the walls to be papered probably every time new tenants moved into an apartment. Landlords may have opted to use wallpaper instead of paint because with its busy patterns, it better hid imperfections in the walls. In some cases tenants apparently added wallpaper in order to beautify the room.

In some of the apartments at 97 Orchard Street, up to 22 layers of wallpaper were discovered by paper conservator Reba Fishman Snyder. 7-10 layers of paint were found underneath the wallpaper in the front rooms. The walls of the kitchens and bedrooms exhibit an average of 37 to 39 layers of paint. Because the building was occupied for 72 years (from 1864 through 1935), simple statistical analysis shows that the interior surfaces were painted approximately every two years.

All photos can be found at the Tenement Museum's online photo archive, photos.tenement.org, and are part of the Museum's collection. Arch photo and facade photo by Jerome Liebling.

- Posted by Kate

Tenement Architects - Entirely Unneccessary?

It’s a good thing 19th century architects rarely got famous for their work on tenement houses. According to Andrew Dolkart, a historic preservation expert at Columbia who studies they city’s everyday, or “vernacular,” structures, tenement architects (and even the renowned designers of some cast-iron commercial buildings in SoHo) did little more than sign legal documents and select pre-fab ornamentations from warehouses.

The Italiante stone lintels above the windows of buildings surrounding the museum, for instance, which were in fashion at the time and helped stabilize the window frames, were probably chosen from a manufacturing lot somewhere in the city. (97 Orchard's have since been scraped off and smoothed over.)

And as for the design of the tenements themselves, the boxy four or five story buildings – subdivided into equally nondescript two or three room apartments – are among the simplest structures in the city to build. Contractors hardly needed to follow blueprints; in fact, they often improvised as they went along.

For more info: Check out Dolkart's book, Biography of a Tenement House in New York City (featuring none other than 97 Orchard), on sale at the museum shop.

97 Orchard in the 1940s, stone lintels still intact. Courtesy Municipal Archives.

-posted by Liana Grey

From the Archives - Linoleum Project

It was, if you will, the architectural equivalent of buying knock-off designer products: In order to save money on flooring, one of 97 Orchard's landlords lined some of the bedrooms and kitchens with felt-backed linoleum, a relatively cheap mixture of linseed oil and cork dust that replicated the patterns of carpet, tiles, and parquet squares. The material was first invented in 1860, but didn't boom in popularity until the Armstrong Cork Company, a major linoleum manufacturing firm, launched a massive marketing campaign in the 1920s.

During stabalization on 97 Orchard's 4th and 5th floors, we removed over 200 pieces of linoleum with 45 different patterns. After scouring research libraries around the city for original pattern books, such as the one pictured on the right, resident linoleum expert Melissa identified 21 of the patterns. The dates of those pieces Melissa was able to identify ranged from 1913 to 1939, though the earliest patterns were recycled throughout the next few decades. We suspect, in fact, that the first layer of linoleum was installed in 1924; in a mystery we're still trying to solve, multiple copies of newspaper pages from February 14, 16, and 17 of that year were used to line the wood floor underneath.





Pattern book images on the left match two of the pieces we removed from 97 Orchard. Tile-mimicking linoleum, as shown above, was found most frequently in the building, particularly kitchens. Floral, rug-like patterns were used in bedrooms.

From The Archives - Peeling Back the Layers

This week, we're taking a look at the artifacts in our permanent collection.

The first staff members to set foot in 97 Orchard were shocked to find wallpaper covering the living room walls of each apartment. They'd assumed that tenements were drab places of squalor, where saving money to move out took priority over investing in home decoration. Luckily for residents, their landlord took charge of the building's aesthetics, hiring contractors to paper the walls with attractive prints every 2 to 3 years (most likely when new tenants were about to move in) and raising rents to cover the cost. We don't know exactly how much he spent, but invoices for a contractor working in the East Village at the end of the 19th century show that entire apartments could be papered for $24 to $32. According to other records, a decorator charged $1 to complete a parlor in Alphabet City. Wallpaper was difficult to remove, so contractors simply added new patterns over previous layers. Using water and a paint knife to scrape off samples, a paper conservator we hired in 1990 discovered a total of 18 - 22 layers in each apartment. Scraps, like those below, were added to our permanent collection.