Tenement Podcast: Businesses of the Lower East Side

At the Tenement Museum, we like to share what we know about the immigrant experience and the history of the Lower East Side any way we can. Whether by building tours, neighborhoods tours, Tenement Talks, or right here through the blog, we want people to engage and talk to us in any way that's convenient for them. That's why, starting today, we're launching the Lower East Side Tenement Museum Podcast.

We have a bunch of episodes lined up featuring interviews with our staff, sneak previews of what we're working on, and interesting tidbits about 97 Orchard Street and the LES. Plus, soon you'll be able to subscribe to the podcasts on iTunes so you never miss an episode.

Episode One features Part 1 of my interview with Curatorial Director and Research Manager Dave Favaloro discussing the history of LES businesses and how we're integrating it into our restored tenement building at 97 Orchard.

Check it out below and stay tuned for Part 2, plus a lot of other cool stuff to come.

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-Posted by Joe Klarl

Questions for Curatorial: Where Do I Store My Pushcart?

Curatorial Director Dave answers your questions. Got a question for Dave? Email us.

Do we know if pushcart peddlers would keep their carts in “stables”? Was pushcart peddling a good job relative to other immigrant occupations?

Pushcart peddlers would keep their carts in stables. One such stable existed on Sheriff Street at the turn of the century. In most cases, peddlers did not own their carts, but rented them for about a quarter a day.

In some ways, pushcart peddling was a good job relative to other immigrant occupations but, much like garment work, an incredibly trying and exhausting one as well. Perhaps the greatest attraction of peddling was the idea that a person could be their own boss.

As a reflection of European market culture, it also served as an important link to the past and a means of mediating the transition to life in the United States. Otherwise, long hours and low pay were the rewards of the peddler. According to one son of a Lower East Side pushcart peddler, his father would “get up at 5:30, go get his pushcart from the pushcart stable on Sheriff Street, where he rented it for about a quarter a day. Then he’d wheel it over to the wholesaler Attorney Street. Then he’d take it over to the ferry to Greenpoint. He’d make about $2.00 or 2.50 a day, six days…He’d help feed a family of seven on that.”

Learn more about modern-day street vendors at the Street Vendor Project website.

Pushcarts on the Lower East Side, 1937. Photograph by Arnold Eagle. (c) Lower East Side Tenement Museum 2010.

A former streetscape revealed in destruction on Grand Street

Our Minding the Store project manager, Chris Neville, has been researching the businesses that operated out of 97 Orchard Street from 1863 to 1988. As such, he's become mildly obsessed with the streetscapes of the Lower East Side. He thinks a lot about facades and buildings and how businesses incorporated themselves into tenements. He looks all the time for evidence of how stores in the earlier part of the 20th century, and even into the 19th century, might have set up their spaces. We don't have a lot of documentary evidence about the businesses in 97 or the building's facade, so we look around the neighborhood for similar tenements, checking for the layers of physical fabric that so often exist in older neighborhoods.

His eyes attuned to notice architectural details, Chris right away noticed some markings on the brick walls of the tenements next door to the two that were demolished recently, after the deadly fire on Grand Street. He did some research and discovered what existed on those lots before the tenements were constructed in the 1890s.

Head over to Bowery Boogie to read his post.

Questions for Curatorial: Business in the Tenements

Curatorial Director Dave answers your questions.


What businesses operated out of 97 Orchard Street over the years? How do you know?

The Museum's researchers use many different sources to find out about the history of our tenement building. City directory records, newspapers, factory inspector reports, and oral histories are just a few of the resources available to us when researching retail or manufacturing businesses.

For instance, the 1917 city directory records the following businesses occupying the storefronts spaces of 97 Orchard Street:

• Claman Stove Repair (Morris and Irving Claman)
• Orchard Printing Co.
• The dry goods store of Louis Schocken
• The watchmaking shop of Louis Rudow

Another useful place to look are the telephone directories. While our building's residential tenants never had telephones, shopkeepers did. The New York Telephone Company’s Address-Telephone Directories listed the following numbers for the shops at 97 Orchard Street between 1929-1940:

1929:
Fisher, Harry Hosiery
Fischer & Schimmel Hosiery
Orchard Printing Co.
Scher, A. General Merchandise
Schimmel, Rubin Hosiery
Solomon, L Printer

1930:
Fischer & Schimmel Hosiery
Scher, A. General Merchandise

1931:
Reliable Jobbing Co.
S & D Underwear Corp.
Scher, A. General Merchandise

1933
S & D Underwear Corp.
Scher Jobbing House
Scherm Wm Jobber

1934
Duberman, H. Handbags
Scher’s Jobbing House Inc.
Scher’s Jobbing House Inc.
Seaboard Impt. Co.

1935
Duberman, H. Handbags
Gips & Mendesohn Inc. Hosiery
Seaboard Impt. Co.

1937
Auction Exchange
Gips & Mendesohn Inc. Hosiery

1939
Brandies, Herman Auctioneer
Brandies & Marcus Merchandise
Gips & Mendesohn Inc. Hosiery

1940
Gips & Mendesohn Inc. Hosiery
Scher, Wm. Auction Outlet

Does anyone want to share what a "jobber" is? I bet some of you readers know. Or worked as a jobber even?

Some of these businesses, including the auction house, will be part of the Museum's forthcoming "Minding the Store" exhibit, slated to open in early 2011.

Questions for Curatorial: Basement Businesses

Curatorial Director Dave answers your questions.

Did another business occupy the basement storefront adjacent to Schneider’s saloon during the late 1860s and 1870s?

According to the 1873 New York City Business Directory, 97 Orchard Street resident Heinrich Dreyer operated a real estate office with his partner, Christian Stark, in the building’s basement storefront.

A longtime real estate agent in Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany, Hanover-born Heinrich Dreyer frequently listed commercial properties for sale in German-language newspapers such as the New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung.

By 1873, Dreyer appears to have partnered with Wurttemberg-born Christian Stark. Available records indicate that in 1873, 28-year-old Stark lived with his mother, brother, and two sisters at 45 Forsyth Street.

Interestingly, the 1870 US Census indicates that Stark had previously owned a local liquor store. How did he get into the real estate business? Evidence suggests that, in 1870, his mother Catherine owned $20,000 worth of real estate. It is possible that she helped her son invest and enabled him to partner with Heinrich Dreyer.

More recent architectural probes in 97 Orchard Street's basement strongly suggests that the saloon took up the entire basement space. Therefore, it's likely that Dreyer and Stark operated their business out of the bar, which was a gathering space and often used for political meetings and social events.

Tomorrow, read about a few of the businesses that operated out of 97 Orchard in the early 20th century.

Historic Signage, part II

Part Two of Derya's post on the old signs hanging in the windows of 97 Orchard is now up on Bowery Boogie. Go read about the Louis Chock underwear store!

Shop Signs in the Windows of 97 Orchard

Derya Golpinar, our collections manager, and Dave Favaloro, our research manager, collaborated on two posts for the Bowery Boogie blog on the signs now gracing the windows of 97 Orchard Street. We used two signs from our collection - one for Feltly Hats and one for Chock, Inc. Head over to Bowery Boogie to read the first post today, on Minding the Store and the history of Feltly Hats.

Awash in Beer History: Tapping into the Little Germanies of the 19th Century in New York and Brooklyn

Illustration: “A German Institution” Featured in, “Bowery, Saturday Night.” Harper's New Monthly Magazine, April 1871. New York, NY. p.679. Courtesy of Harper's Magazine on-line archives.

Today, a special guest-blog by Cindy VandenBosch, founder of tour company Urban Oyster and beloved former Tenementer.

The history of American brewing is usually associated with cities like Milwaukee and St. Louis, but New York City's history is also awash in beer.

Germans flooded into New York starting in the 1840s, and they brought with them their taste for the beverage as well as their own techniques to brew it. By the end of the century, some of the country's largest brewers were located here in Manhattan and across the river in Brooklyn.

Breweries employed thousands of workers across the city, brewing millions of gallons of beer enjoyed by the city's residents. Germans brought two important innovations to the making and enjoyment of beer in America.

First, they brought a new style of beer – lager. Lighter than the ales and porters of this period, lager could also be stored for longer and transported farther, making it ideally suited for the American palette and the country's vast distances.

Second, they introduced a new way to drink beer – rather than swilling booze in dank saloons, Germans enjoyed their drinks in more social surroundings. Beer drinking was done at singing competitions, the theater, sporting clubs, and outdoor beer gardens or beer halls; it was rarely an end in itself. This practice soon spread to the rest of the American population, who began flocking to the gardens to drink beer among family and friends.

Celebrating the Capitulation of Sedan at the “Atlantic Garden.” Featured in, “Bowery, Saturday Night.” Harper's New Monthly Magazine, April 1871. New York, NY. p.679. Courtesy of Harper's Magazine on-line archives.

In 1864, just one year after Lukas Glockner opened up 97 Orchard Street to tenants, John Schneider published an official announcement in the German-language paper New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung to invite “friends and acquaintances as well as the honorable musicians” to the opening party for his new saloon, located in the basement of the tenement.

John Schneider's Official Announcement of the Opening of His Saloon:



Translation:

Hotels and Wirtschaften
“The undersigned makes announcement to his fine friends and acquaintances as well as the honorable musicians, that he has taken over by purchase the saloon of Mr. Schurlein, 97 Orchard Street. Invited to the opening, Saturday, November 12th, with a superb lunch, respectfully.
John Schneider
97 Orchard Street”

While far smaller than the nearby Atlantic Gardens (see above), a massive palace-like establishment on the Bowery that opened its doors in 1858, Schneider's saloon bore little resemblance to the city's traditional barrooms. Women and children were a common sight, and the purchase of a beer included a free lunch, as was often the case in German-owned saloons.

Just a ferry ride across the East River and a three-cent train ride away, another John Schneider (no relation) was hard at work in Brooklyn's “German Town” - what is today the neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Bushwick. This John Schneider was also in the beer business, perfecting his next lager recipe, training brewers, many of whom would go on to become beer barons in their own right, and operating a beer garden and hall adjacent to his brewery.

With the extension of the railroad line from downtown Brooklyn out to Bushwick and Williamsburg in the late 1850s, many more visitors could enjoy a day in the beer gardens of German Town for less than ten cents. The Brooklyn Daily Times declared about Schneider's hall in 1861,

“Schneider’s brewery is known far and near as the largest one making the best lager and having the jolliest, best-natured proprietor of any in this city. His gardens and his halle are also the largest, finest, and most aristocratic of any in the State. During the warm weather thousands daily visit them, lounge around, play billiards, listen to the sweetest of music and – drink lager of course.”

Schneider's business was so successful in those days that by 1870 his brewery, beer gardens, and hall had expanded to nearly an entire block, taking up 20 lots in the heart of a neighborhood that had over 300 saloons and more than 10 breweries at the time.

Today, only one building remains from John Schneider's old brewing business, but there are remnants of other breweries from that time period still standing (see below), as well as historic structures associated with beer drinking and the German community of the 19th century.

Once one of the city’s largest breweries, this 19th century brewery building still stands and is being used for recordings studios. Photo courtesy of Nathan Kensinger.

After a long absence, breweries and beer gardens have started to return to New York. No longer owned by German immigrants and their descendants, many establishments still try to reflect the city's rich brewing history.

For example, Brooklyn Lager, one of the most popular beers in the city, includes an old recipe from Brooklyn's pre-Prohibition days. Beer gardens serving fine craft beers and traditional German dishes (though the lunches are no longer free) are growing in popularity again – places like Radegast Hall & Biergarten in Williamsburg and the Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden in Astoria, Queens.

Just one year from now, the Tenement Museum will open an exhibit dedicated to telling the story of John Schneider's saloon within the context of the German immigrant community on the Lower East Side in the mid to late 19th century.

If you would like to learn more about the story of beer brewing in New York, both past and present, join us for our Brewed in Brooklyn tour on Saturdays and Sundays between March and December.

This tour begins with a visit to the Brooklyn Brewery and a sampling of various beers on tap, and then we head over to the heart of the old Brewers Row in the eastern part of Williamsburg where we explore what it was like to live, worship, and work in the '”Little Germany” of Brooklyn in the mid to late 19th century.

Along the way, we visit a couple of mom and pop businesses and a beautiful church that was built by German immigrants; hear the stories of residents past and present; and, of course, taste some of the finest food and beer Brooklyn has to offer today. For more information and to make a reservation, please visit http://www.urbanoyster.com/.

Cindy VandenBosch is the co-founder of Urban Oyster, a company dedicated to creating tour experiences that explore the past and present of neighborhoods in New York City with an emphasis on local consumption and production, historic preservation, cultural diversity, and sustainability. She was formerly the Education Coordinator at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

Factories in the Tenement

One of 97 Orchard's residents, Eastern European immigrant Harris Levine, operated a makeshift garment factory out of his apartment. He paid two unmarried Jewish women $8 -$9 a week to put the finishing touches on items and an old man about $12 a week to iron them. Curatorial Director Dave Favaloro discusses other businesses run from tenants' homes.

Knowledge of Harris Levine’s shop comes from the reports of the Department of the Factory Inspector. During the 1890s, inspectors investigated tenement apartments that were being used for garment production, as well as other types of manufacturing. According to the Department’s 1893 Report, in which Harris Levine was also listed, Austrian-born Herman Queller operated a broom and window brush factory out of his home at 97 Orchard Street. Queller appears to have employed one man to work alongside him. Although Herman Queller was Jewish, the Report records him as working nine hours on Saturdays, the Sabbath.


Herman Queller, date unknown

The 1893 Factory Inspectors Report also records Michael Schkedron operating a cigar factory out of his home at 97 Orchard Street. Although Museum researchers do not know where Schkedron hailed from, the Inspectors Report that he was both the proprietor and sole employee of his business, at which he worked approximately 70 hours a week, including 10 hours on Sunday.

At the time, the Department of Factory Inspectors claimed to have investigated only 1/5 of the total number of shops operating in tenement apartments, so it’s likely that other residents of 97 Orchard Street operated manufacturing businesses out of their homes. Moreover, the Factory Inspectors only listed addresses for the shops they inspected during the early 1890s. It’s very possible other shops were operating out of the home before and after the 1890s.

In some sense, Natalie Gumpertz’s dressmaking shop could also be considered a manufacturing enterprise even though it’s unlikely she employed anyone but her children. As mentioned above, it’s likely that other manufacturing enterprises employing non-family members operated at other times in 97 Orchard Street but, unfortunately, Museum researchers have found no evidence of their existence.

2009 Gala - Bowery Savings Bank

At our 21st anniversery gala last night, we honored architects Gary E. Handel, Enrique Norton, and Bradford Perkins. Fittingly, the space where we held the dinner was architectually exquisite - and as historically significant as 97 Orchard Street itself. For years, the Capitale event hall on Bowery and Grand Street housed the Bowery Savings Bank, built by the prominent architect Stanford White in 1834 to resemble a Romanesque church. It was popular with the Lower East Side's immigrant families, who needed a convenient place to store their savings. By 1980, the bank expanded to 35 branches across the New York metro area, but ran out of cash two years later (as a result of bank deregulation, which sent savings account interest rates skyrocketing) and was sold five times over the next two decades. Check out the gorgeous Corinthian columns, domed ceiling, and stained-glass windows in the ballroom, where guests dined and virtuoso fiddler Eileen Ivers performed (photos of the event are coming soon!):