Discovering Treasures With a Little Bit of Research...

Eva Silverman is a New Jersey native whose grandmother Gladys settled on the Lower East Side in 1920 as a Jewish immigrant from Poland. Eva's  "Mapping Roots" project explores New York City geography and history through her family's stories and photographs. She's currently working on an installation at the Carlton Arms Hotel here in New York City, where she'll be hosting a reception on Saturday, March 10.

In the following post, Eva finds the site in the Lower East Side where her grandmother attended school. For more information about Eva's work and the upcoming reception, visit her blog (where this post originally appeared).

I love research! There is nothing more satisfying than looking for something, following leads, and then finding it! This installation has been FULL of satisfaction on that level. Today, as I pair images of ‘now’ and ‘then’, I was looking for an image of a pushcart peddler on Hester Street. During my search, I found an image of a newspaper article that showed the inside of a school at Hester and Chrystie. This exact location is where my grandma went to ‘continuation school’ — which was what was required of her when she dropped out of high school to work in a sweatshop. Children under 16 who worked in the sweatshops, were required to work fewer hours and attend ”Continuation School’ for a half-day every Saturday.

The Lower East Side School that Eva's Grandmother attended

That corner of Hester and Chrystie streets has changed so much since then with the development in the late 30′s of the Sara D. Roosevelt park. When I returned to that corner the other day, it was hard to see where this ‘school’ could have been and I settled on the fact that maybe it had been small classrooms in some of the larger tenements. But then I found this photo and all that changed. Presumably, this was THE school where my grandma went to continuation school. It is no longer there. The above photo was taken in 1929, just a few years past when my grandma would have gone there. I read somewhere else that this was Public School 7 (P.S. 7) and that in a 1896 article was considered the dirtiest school in the city. There was an article written about it in 1905 — a little before my grandma’s time, but still interesting.

If I haven’t mentioned it before, all of these images are courtesy of the New York Public Library. They have an AMAZING archive of photos that have been digitized.

--Posted by Eva Silverman

Teaching the History of Immigrants and Discrimination

Immigrants are remarkably varied, but most have one thing in common: they face discrimination as new Americans. This experience resonates with elementary school children, who understand the challenge of being the “new kid.” Similarly, teenagers easily relate to being judged and judging others.

Recently, New York City teachers gathered at the Museum to explore the topic of discrimination. Together, we considered the pervasive language of “othering” and its curricular connections. We began by reflecting on ethnic stereotypes, both good and bad and went on to examine political cartoons and music from the past and the present.

 
John Bull and Uncle Sam--popular 19th c. symbols of England and the U.S.--
debate about the Irish. The Irishman is depicted with a pronounced
lower jaw and mouth, a flat, short nose, and the sloping forehead--stereotypes of a "racial inferior".
 

By exploring the lives of three immigrant families that lived in 97 Orchard Street, we gained insight into the history of racial prejudice. Questions guided our visits to their recreated homes. What was it like to be one of the only Irish families in the 1860s “Little Germany” of the Lower East Side? How did Natalie Gumpertz get by when her husband disappeared and gender discrimination prevailed in the 1870s? What options did Adlofo and Rosario Baldizzi have as Italian immigrants in the face of the discriminatory quotas passed in 1924? These questions, along with music and political cartoons, shaped our experience and our understanding of the role that popular culture plays in advancing and negating stereotypes.

In this  1871 cartoon, Catholic bishops drawn to look like threatening alligators play on the religious superstition Americans felt towards the Catholic Church. A father tries to protect his family. On the left stands St. Peter's cathedral, the center of the Roman Catholic Church,
now re-labeled "Tammany Hall."
 

This workshop helped me remember the power of a simple drawing and the magic that happens when a group of dedicated teachers gather around a table. An old cartoon still communicates prejudice over 100 years after its publication. It resonates. One glance makes you curious to learn more, to understand its place within history and our culture. I wish I could visit each of their classrooms and hear the conversation it inspires in today's students.

--Posted by Director of Education Miriam Bader

Having fun with History and Challah: Our New Family Literacy Program

I’ve managed the Museum’s ESOL program, Shared Journeys, for the last 3 years. It's been incredibly rewarding to develop new programs, write lesson plans, and pilot, promote and implement our workshops. New immigrants learning English always bring a different perspective to our museum.

Over the last 5 years there’s been a growing demand to work with entire immigrant families. In response to this, we’ve recently launched a Family Literacy program, a new way to teach English and learn about adjusting to life in the U.S. Participating families come together to have fun, learn and adjust to a new life together.

Visiting the Rogarshevsky home at 97 Orchard

We recently piloted this new Family Literacy programwith the help of collaborators including La Guardia Community College’s Center for Immigrant Education and Training and the Fifth Avenue Committee. Ten families took a couple of hours from their busy lives for a multi-session program to spend time together, learn about immigration history, compare their own stories to the ones in the past and have fun as a family. We shared the story of the Rogarshevsky family, an observant Lithuanian-Jewish family that lived in our building in 1915. We titled the workshop “Preserving Tradition in a New Environment” because the family struggled with preserving their Jewish faith while working long hours in garment factories. Abraham, Fannie and their 6 children lived in a small tenement apartment of 97 Orchard Street.

Making collages about favorite family activities

With the help of Kathryn Lloyd, Jess Varma and Raj Varma we told the story of how the American work week often compelled Jewish immigrants—especially children—to work on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath. The Sabbath is an important day of rest sacred for an observant Jewish family. This story sparked reactions from the Shared Journeys families. I recall a Peruvian family sharing how difficult it was for them to have to work during Christmas. In their native land this was a time to rest and not work. A Pakistani-Muslim family shared how they would try to work around their religious beliefs. For example, the father of the family runs a little shop and this allows him to shut down in order to pray five times a day.

Some of the families got to come back to the Museum and use our brand-new demonstration kitchen to try their hands at making traditional Challah bread like the Rogarshevsky family would have eaten. Miriam Bader led them through a simple demonstration, and the families got to take some samples home and bake them. At the end all of them got to share their own recipes for Christmas.
It’s been exciting to watch this program come together. My hope is that many more immigrant families will experience it in the months to come.

Braiding dough for Challah

--Posted by Education Associate Pedro Garcia

Inside 103 Orchard: Students Experiment with Creative Re-use

At our new Visitor and Education Center, 2nd and 3rd grade students visiting the Tenement Museum for our Meet the Residents program can tap into their own ingenuity to make something from nothing. During a new activity called Creative Re-use, students are inspired by the resourcefulness of the immigrants who lived in 97 Orchard Street. A puppet made from a sock, a rug made from rags and even a scooter made from a crate and some wood scraps serve as examples of the ways former residents creatively reused what they had to make the things they needed. 

Doll in a stylish striped poncho

As the students sit comfortably in our bright, brand-new classrooms, they have the opportunity to creatively r-euse discarded materials and transform them into masterpieces. Using items from the recycling bins at the Museum and donations from Materials for the Arts, New York City’s ultimate reuse center, along with lots of imagination, students have been busy making toys and games.

As they work, students consider how they can creatively reuse the things around them. Recycling bins become treasure troves, scraps become dolls, puppets, airplanes, and even angry birds and Pokémon characters.

A see-through polka-dot airplane

It’s been quite amazing to see the students’ resourcefulness and even more remarkable to watch them curiously look around with wonder at the possibility of making something from nothing.

--Posted by Miriam Bader, Director of Education

Meet the Educators: Pedro Garcia

I was fortunate to recently sit down with Pedro Garcia, a great member of the Tenement Museum staff who juggles a few different roles here. He discussed his job, his own struggles as a young boy adapting to America, and how the immigration experience is ongoing.

Could you introduce yourself to our readers?
I'm Pedro Garcia. I work at the Tenement Museum as education associate for training and outreach.

How long have you been working here?
In total, I've been at the museum for five years.

What does your job entail?
I have two main roles. Training involves teaching all staff of the Tenement, both part-timers and full-timers, to lead public tours of the museum. So that's the bulk of my job. And outreach involves managing our ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) program called Shared Journeys and promoting the education program that we have to offer to the community of the Lower East Side.

What exactly is the mission of the Shared Journeys program?
Well, it's a program that was developed at the museum a few years ago, and the idea is to use history to teach English. Existing ESL classes from around the city can come visit the museum and in a two hour workshop, they will learn about immigration of the past and share their own experiences. Hence the name.

What do you find most gratifying about your job?
It's very rewarding when I teach someone how to do a tour and that person excels. It's also great when Shared Journeys accomplishes its mission, when the students come and they feel that, yes, my immigrant story is very similar to those from a hundred years ago.

Before you worked at the Tenement Museum, what did you do?
I used to work in education. It wasn't really history or museum stuff. I worked teaching for non-profits. Basically, I was an educator in small settings for children who had behavioral problems.

Did that help you prepare for your work here?
Yeah. It helps a little bit because I used to be a trainer there, too. It's very similar and helped me to build some of the skills I use here.

I know you have an immigrant story of your own. Where did you grow up?
Well, I was born in Venezuela. My family came to the United States when I was very young. I was about eight or ten years old. We came straight to New York, and I've been here ever since.

What year was that?
The late eighties, like '88 or '89.

When you got to New York, I assume you weren't an English speaker...
No, no, none of us spoke English.

How did you learn the language?
The great benefit that I always cherish is that I went to school in the Bronx where they have bilingual education. That helped make the transition easier for me... not easy because learning English is never really easy. It's actually one of the hardest languages to learn. But I was able to have a little bit of support and that helped me to transition and grow.

I heard you were recently on a panel where you spoke about being bullied as a kid because of your English skills. Can you tell me about that?
The panel was about professionals in New York City who grew up as immigrant kids, and we spoke to New York City teachers. And the question was, "What is the hardest part about being an immigrant kid newly arriving to school?" I said the hardest part is being bullied because you don't know the language and you don't know where to go. It becomes a very terrifying experience. I went to school in the Bronx and at that time, the neighborhood I lived in was very dangerous. Shootings and violence were all around me. That made it even scarier. I was trying to convey to the teachers one thing that can be done to resolve some of the fear experienced when immigrants arrive - they should have a buddy. There should be another immigrant kid helping them to get adjusted because sometimes, kids can be mean.

Did you have that?
No.

You felt like you were on your own?
I was on my own. My sister went to a different school, and my brother was very young, so he wasn't in my school either. Like I was telling the teachers at the panel, when immigrants come, it's a whole new world. It can be very scary already. It's very daunting to be in a new place. Why make it harder? Why not help them a little bit with a buddy?

Do you feel that your own immigrant experience was similar to the families that we feature here at the museum?
I've always felt that way, yeah. When I tell my own stories about how difficult it is coming to the United States, I think of the Baldizzi family. It was very hard for the parents to come over. It was very hard for the whole family. The Baldizzis had to share a one bedroom apartment with four of them. We had to share a one bedroom apartment with five of us. So I think more and more, our experiences are very similar. My parents wanted us to get the best out of being in the U.S., to learn English, to be Americans. It's the same thing the Baldizzis taught their children. I truly believe there are a lot of similarities.

What do you hope visitors to the museum take away from it? What do you hope they learn about immigration?
Well, I hope that they get to think about the immigration experience and how hard it was while realizing that it hasn't gotten easier. There's a bad misconception that everyone who came to this country in the last twenty or thirty years had it very easy. It's hard, but a different type of difficulty. If visitors pause for a second and just think about what they're seeing around them and what they just heard about the past, they can see a lot of similarities. I hope that by the time they leave a tour that I lead or a tour that is lead by one of my trainees, they at least think about it. I don't want to force anybody to change their minds or their opinions. I just want them to start discussing it. You just have to stop and think.

- Posted by Joe Klarl

Meet the Educators: Justin Gilman and Rachel Serkin

Recently, I had the opportunity to talk with two of the Tenement Museum's educators, Justin Gilman and Rachel Serkin. They told me about their jobs, inside and outside of 97 Orchard.

How long have you been working at the Tenement Museum?

JG: I've been working here for a month a half.

RS: I've been working here for four years now.

JG: Pretty different.

RS: For your fifth year, you get a chamber pot.

JG: I can't wait!

Can you tell me about your day-to-day schedule?

JG: Basically, I give tours here. I mostly do the Moore family tour, the Irish immigrant family. I'm learning the Piecing It Together tour starting today. I'm learning it because I took Rachel's tour and she was really great.

On a typical day, I get here about fifteen minutes before the tour and hang out with the other awesome educators. There's so many new people to meet every day. The tours last about an hour, and each and every tour is completely different. So every day is a totally different experience with student groups or families that came from Ireland or people who have no idea of Irish culture at all. I work twice a week: Thursdays and Saturdays for about five or six hours a day.

RS: When I started out at the museum, I was an access intern four summers ago in the office [editor's note: "access" involves working to make the museum accessible to people with disabilities]. So part of my training experience was to give tours, and I loved it so much that I asked them, "Can I come back next summer?" I've stuck around ever since.

I've succeeded in doing all the building tours so I've got all the family stories. I just passed the test to do the Immigrant Soles walking tour, and in addition, I do the Shared Journeys program with ESL classes. I'm a teacher by profession so, for me, it's a combination of teaching/storytelling/performance art.

I typically work three days a week. My day starts at ten or eleven o'clock but I usually end up coming an hour early because I like everyone here so much. It's really fun to schmooze in our break room. It's like our warm-up for the day and then, typically, I'm doing anywhere from three to five tours a day.

I had my first school group of the year yesterday... eighth graders. I just finished graduate school and the tenement building is my unorthodox classroom.

Justin, what other experience do you bring to the Tenement Museum? Do you have another outside job?

JG: Yeah, I got a couple of jobs. I'm an actor by trade. I just graduated from Columbia in May with a master's in acting. I don't have a teaching credential so I end up teaching acting because you don't always need a credential for that in university situations. They're just like, "Aw if you can do it, come on in." That's really fun and I love it. I'm also a nanny for a five month old baby boy, a four year old, and a six year old boy and an usher in an interactive bus tour that goes through Times Square called "The Ride."

When did you start doing that?

JG: I started doing that a week ago. I had a teaching job over the summer at Columbia where I taught high school kids acting, directing, and playwriting. Then I thought, I'm out of grad school and I have no job experience in New York City at all except for teaching. So I spent all of  September trying to find work and now finally, as of five days ago, can pay my rent.

RS: Mazel tov!

So being a tour guide is brand new to you.

JG: Yeah. Everything that's happening to me right now is new but I think that all of my acting training comes into it, like breathing so you can be relaxed. I'm more of a storyteller so my tours are very, very story heavy. They're about being as dramatic as possible.

What do you each find most rewarding about being educators here?

RS: I love my job. This is the coolest job that I've ever had. And the building itself is cool, too. As Justin said, we're really storytellers. I'm from Brooklyn, born and raised, so this is my history and my family's history. I love interacting with people from all over the world. Sometimes you touch people. I've had grown men get teary-eyed on my tours. And people share their stories. These families came to this country a hundred years ago and I try to get people to realize you have more in common with them than you might think.

JG: For me, it's the people as well. Teaching people is huge for me. And since I'm doing the Irish tour mostly, seeing people share what their ancestors had to deal with when they came to New York, it's really striking to me how that affects people. It gets me thinking too, because I'm half Irish, about my family, and thinking about what they had to deal with when they came to New York. I'm so lucky and so grateful that they dealt with that so we don't have to.

But the most rewarding thing is this job makes me feel like more of an activist because there's a lot we still have to do, especially in the Lower East Side, revving people up and saying, "we're not done yet." It's what helps me wake up in the morning.

RS: A lot of people sometimes come in with the mindset that their family was the only demographic to come through, and I love talking about Kleindeutschland (Little Germany) or the Five Points or Chinatown. This neighborhood is still a living, breathing thing. This community is still a living organism, still here.

What's most difficult about your job?

RS: Oh boy.

JG: I'm new to this, so I don't have a lot of difficulties right now. It's the simple things like remembering the dates, the names, the information, and being okay with not knowing the answers to everything. I'd like to be a know-it-all and make something up while saying it passionately but I can't do that because the visitors might know more than me. It's the idea of humbly giving a tour. I am not the end-all, be-all of this information. You clearly might know more than me and I'd love to hear your experience. The other thing is that people come in with their story and their family and sometimes it's difficult to open up their minds and say, "that's your experience, but we're talking about the Moore family. It's a different experience, but there may be correlations." It can be difficult, but when it happens, it's really rewarding.

RS: And if you work at a job like this, you learn a lot about human behavior and people. When there's fifteen, sixteen of us and 325 square feet, a lot of stuff can go down on a hot summer day, and sometimes people don't necessarily want to hear what you want to say. But we like to be challenged, and we like when people challenge each other. The majority of the time, the discussions are wonderful, but sometimes people just come in with a certain mindset and they aren't willing to change. They might not see any value in the history of the building, which is unfortunate.

One of the most challenging things for me is that I talk so much. We talk for a living, and it can be emotionally exhausting sometimes. When I was learning these tours, like the Moores tour, I started having dreams that I was giving the tour in my sleep.

Doing every tour here, you must be juggling a lot of information.

RS: It's amazing. I've learned that you can just turn it on for each tour. Sometimes you feel like you're telling the same tour but in the end, you can still bring it back to suit the individual theme or topic of the tour.

Do you ever confuse one tour for another?

RS: Oh yeah. One time I was doing a Getting By tour and I forgot Julius Gumpertz's name. I just drew a blank.

JG: That's something that I'm nervous about now that I'm learning my second tour. I've just been giving this one tour every day, and suddenly there's a lot of new information.

How do you prepare for all the question that you're asked?

RS: I'm used to some of them. "Is this the fireplace? Where's the toilet?" We get a lot of some of the same questions but I love it when visitors ask questions. I don't feel that I've done my job right when they're quiet. This is your tour. I like to talk, but I don't like to lecture. I want you to share. Open it up, ask anything you want.

JG: And we have tour content for every tour, and it's so much information that you couldn't possibly get out in an hour. So sometimes it's good for me to go back and reread the tour content because there's so much info that answers questions I have for myself. We have to study a lot because we're students at the same time as we're educators.

RS: We're always observing each other. They put us on observations because it's the same content, but every educator has a different way of spinning the same story. It refreshes your tour content.

JG: I observed somebody else today on the Moore family tour, and she does a tour that is 180 degrees from what I do, but in the end, there's the same result, and it's beautiful to see that.

How do you react when you don't know something? Do you admit that you just don't know it and need to study?

JG: I have to because I feel like otherwise I'm not doing my job. I always say "please go to the Visitor's Center where we have so many books and online access for further research." If I honestly just don't the information, it's always better for me to say that than lie to you.

RS: Absolutely. There's some things I just don't know and I'll say "Sorry, but I'm going to be sure to get that information."

Do people typically react well when that happens?

RS: Yeah. Overall, people are very understanding. We don't know everything and that's okay.

JG: I think that's how I feel a leader should work. It's like I know something up to a point and then I may need your help. Because I think when we lie and give the wrong information, then we're sending them the wrong message about our position. And I'd rather just say, "if you know more than me, you might want to talk about this because I want to hear." It's not like I'm the dictator and they're my minions. We're all in this together and I just happen to know more about this particular family.

RS: I've had visitors step in and save me because they knew an answer I didn't. Thank you!

JG: When there's somebody who has come straight from Ireland because they've heard about this museum and they want to take this tour, I'll always look to them and ask if they want to elaborate on anything. I don't want to feel like I know more than them because if his or her family dealt directly with these issues, then technically I don't.

Are there any particularly odd or unique questions that you recall getting?

RS: I've had visitors obsess with the families about birth control and things like that. I have people all the time asking, about the Baldizzis, "So they're Italian Catholics and they really only had two kids? Can you explain that?"

JG: I got asked the question, "Why are you talking about the Irish people so much? When are you going to talk about the Jews?" and I had to say "I'm sorry ma'am, I think you're on the wrong tour?" I can't give all of the tours at once. It's impossible.

I also get a little political with my tour, and we talk about the "No Irish Need Apply" policy, when many people didn't want the Irish to hold jobs. I relate that to modern times, trying to understand who might be in the position of the Irish today. I mention the Arizona immigration law, and sometimes I'll encounter people from Arizona. One woman stood up and gave a speech about why the law was fantastic, but I loved it. I love that stuff because I'd never heard someone vocalize that side of the issue before. People can get super passionate and they've experienced things that I'll never know.

Have you been in situations where you've applied the experience you've gained here?

RS: I come from the belief that history and literature really compliment each other. You look at our bookshop and you've got some of the greatest works of literature. I'd want to teach my kids Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives, excerpts from Triangle: The Fire That Changed America, the work of Abraham Cahan, the editor of The Forward, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Some of the greatest works of literature come out of this time, so I love when I get school kids and tell them it's not just for your history class. Literature is a product of a time period and a historical event. That's exciting for me.

I was doing my student teaching last year, and I was a little nervous because the kids who come to this museum are kind of my guinea pigs. We had a workshop last week about classroom management and the school kids who are coming back. Essentially, we are playing the roles of teachers. We don't see these kids after two hours but we want them to have a positive educational experience. I'm applying for a teaching job right now so I love that I can still apply these skills I've learned and use them somewhere. And I feel so gratified when I get through to a group of kids.

Justin, has it helped you as a performer?

JG: Yeah, for sure. It's taught me more clearly how to read a room. Just like with an audience on stage, when you're giving a tour, sometimes you'll see that there's a gloomy atmosphere going on, and the tour that I give is already specifically gloomy so I can make the decision to put more jokes in, to have a better time. We don't need to be miserable while dealing with sad subject matter.

I use that at my usher job in Times Square job as well, thinking about what these people need and how I can help them. How can I play with a person for an hour and be okay with things changing so that they can have a good experience? I don't have to force gloom and doom on them if I can tell they already feel that way.

And It's the same way on stage. If the audience isn't feeling it, okay, let's do it funny.

RS: You've got to improvise. For me, with school kids, eighth through twelfth graders are the toughest sell because they're at that age where it's hardest to engage and motivate them. They come and pretend they don't care about history but they really do. And I have so much fun really trying to challenge them. I've also become a much better listener as a result of working here, hearing so many other people. It's not all about us talking. Even the questions I ask are a skill. We have some great facilitators that really know how to challenge visitors and ask these open-ended questions. It's a difficult skill and a great skill to have.

JG: It's taught me to be more open and inviting. I want you to be able to open up to me. It's the same on stage, where even if I'm playing a villain, I have to play an inviting villain because I want you to come on the journey with me. I don't want to keep you at bay. The greatest villain performances are when you want to be that guy's friend even though he's a maniac.

Do you think that willingness to learn is contagious with the visitors to the museum?

JG: Absolutely.

RS: We're accessible. We're the face of the museum. We're approachable. I love talking about how I'm the girl from Brooklyn. My mom's from Brooklyn, my dad's from the Bronx, and people can relate to those kind of stories. We're all the children of immigrants.

- Posted by Joe Klarl

Teachers: This is for You!

I’ve been leading tours at the Tenement Museum one day a week for four years, but, as of July 6th, 2010, I’m now a full-time employee. And now I do a LOT more than just lead tours. Every few days, our esteemed vice president of education, Annie Polland, hands me a new duty (thankfully she always waits until I’ve digested the last duty she assigned me.)

Two weeks ago she handed me one of the biggest duties of all: management of our Professional Development Program. In this relatively new series, schoolteachers from across America can visit the Tenement Museum for half- or full-day workshops. We lead the teachers on tours and explain how we’ve made learning fun for students of all ages. We then work with them on lesson plans they can use with their students back home.

It’s a great opportunity for those who aren’t within an easy drive of Manhattan - instead of bringing the class to the Museum, they can use the many resources we offer for classroom instruction.

In the past year we’ve had nearly 300 teachers on this program. We offer eight Professional Development workshops, and a group can choose whichever training session most fits their needs.

“How to Read a Building” shows how to use buildings, architecture, and the decorative arts to understand the past.

In “Housing the Masses,” attendees pretend to be tenement inspectors in 1906. They explore the building, expose violations in building codes, and talk to “tenants” and “the landlord” about why the building is the way it is.

There’s “The Irish Americans” workshop, in which visitors explore that group’s particular immigrant experience. They learn how outsiders viewed the Irish by studying racist anti-immigrant cartoons from the 19th century. If this doesn’t sound relevant to current events, think again: The Irish Potato Famine was the first global human rights cause celebre, and you can find echoes of the responses to the famine and its refugees in today’s popular press.

Feeling peckish, as the English might say? Then go on our “Taste of the Tenement” program, which uses the foods of the Lower East Side to demonstrate how immigrants use cuisine to preserve culture – and how some “ethnic” dishes became American staples.

Storytelling is one of the best ways to teach, and on our “Telling My Story” workshop you’ll learn how conduct your own oral histories.

The “Immigrant Family” workshop shows primary school teachers how to use all the tools at their disposal – artifacts, oral histories, historical documents, and more – to bring history alive for students.

In “How the Other Half Lives” (yes, name inspired by the famous Jacob Riis book), you’ll learn how industrialization shaped day-to-day life for different classes – in radically different ways.

And finally, there’s “Following the Trail,” which follows in the footsteps of immigrants as they travel from their homeland to a new life in America.

As you can see, there's really something for everyone here. To learn more about our teacher training workshops, visit our website, www.tenement.org/education_workshops.php. The site hasn't been updated yet, but the next public workshop is November 2. Workshops for a school or a private group of teachers can also be booked. For rates and availability, contact Harrison at 212-431-0233 x241.

- Posted by Adam Steinberg

Meet Lauren Rosenberg: Summer Intern

Meet Lauren Rosenberg, an education department intern at the Tenement Museum for the summer of 2010. On her last day at the Museum, she took some time to talk with me about her experience as an education department intern.

What have been your major responsibilities?
As an education department intern for the past two months (three days a week), my major responsibility has been assisting in the creation of lesson plans that accompany online interactives.

What were the highlights of your internship?
Aside from working with the wonderful people at the museum, I thoroughly enjoyed the tours and working with teachers and museum professionals.


Which tour was your favorite?
I liked “Piecing It Together” the best because my family immigrated here at roughly the same time period and worked in the garment industry. I actually gave the tour about four times and enjoyed doing so.

Were you nervous at all about giving tours?
I’m a school librarian during the year, so I’m not at all worried about talking to lots of people. [In terms of remembering all the tour information], after doing the run through with Pedro, I was okay and I remembered everything. Plus I saw the tour three times before I gave it, which helped tremendously.

When you first started, what did you expect to gain? Were your expectations fulfilled?
I planned on doing lesson plans that would help teachers and educators and working with great people. And those expectations were definitely fulfilled!

What accomplishment are you most proud of?
My favorite lesson plan is the We are Multicolored plan, which is not up on the website yet but will be eventually. [Editor's Note: We are Multicolored is an online game that allows users to make their own custom flag by mixing together the components of three different national flags.]

What are your plans for the fall and beyond?
I’m an early education school librarian, so that’s where I’ll be. Hopefully I can use the lesson plans I assisted with this summer in the library media center where I work.

Do you have any advice for people who are currently looking for internships?
Internships are a great way to learn about a profession, so try to apply to what you’re interested in and get a wide variety of experiences. Try different things because sometimes you don’t know what you like until you’re involved.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experience here?
The people who work here are amazing, and I’ve had such a wonderful summer. It was truly enjoyable coming to work everyday.

-posted by Devin

Tenants' Rights, circa 1906

Back in March, The Village Voice published its list of New York City's ten worst landlords. These landlords threaten and harass tenants and often simply ignore their tenants’ requests for maintenance, pest control, and repairs -- in other words, they fail to comply with basic legal requirements to provide a safe, healthy living environment.

At the Tenement Museum, we encourage our visitors to debate the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords on our Getting By tour every day. We discuss the Tenement House Act of 1901, which mandated and created a body of Tenement House Inspectors to enforce a set of laws designed to define base minimum requirements for decent living conditions.

For school groups, we get even deeper into the debates surrounding the Tenement House Act. On our Tenement Inspectors program, which we offer to school groups in 4th-7th grades, we have the kids reenact the debates between landlords and tenants that followed the introduction of this law. We train children to play the role of Tenement House Inspectors who have come to inspect 97 Orchard Street in the year 1906. During their inspection, they meet costumed interpreters portraying the landlady, Dora Goldfein, and the tenant, Wolf Goldstein.

Kids imagine what it would have been like living in a place with an insufficient water supply, no light in the hallways, and insects crawling between layers of old wallpaper. They also hear how difficult it was to be a landlord: when a new law came in, he or she suddenly needed to come up with the money to make thousands of dollars worth of repairs. Landlords had to balance their own financial needs with their responsibility to care for individual tenants.

Once the kids finish debating what should be done to bring 97 Orchard Street up to compliance (by 1906 standards), we then teach them about contemporary housing laws and sometimes talk about their own experiences, especially if they are New York City school kids. Check out the list that the Department of Housing helped us develop. Does your own apartment or house stand up to 2010 code?


INSPECTOR LIST 2010

The owner must install window guards in apartments where there are children ten years of age or younger.

No “illegal” window gates, requiring a key to open from the inside, may be
installed on windows leading to a fire escape.

The owner of a dwelling shall post and maintain street numbers on the dwelling, which are plainly visible from the sidewalk in front of the dwelling.

The owner of a multiple dwelling shall install and maintain one or more lights at or near the outside of the front entrance way of the building.

In every multiple dwelling or tenant-occupied two family dwelling, the
owner shall provide electric lighting fixtures for every public hall, stair, fire stair and fire tower on every floor.

The owner of a multiple dwelling or his or her managing agent in control
shall post and maintain in such multiple dwelling a legible sign, conspicuously displayed, containing the janitor's name, address (including apartment number) and telephone number.

The person who performs janitorial services for a multiple dwelling of nine or more units shall reside in or within a distance of one block or 200 feet from the dwelling, whichever is greater.

The owner of a multiple dwelling more than two stories in height shall post and maintain a sign, of sufficient size to be readily seen, which states the number of the floor, near the stairs and elevator.

PLEASE NOTE! This list was developed by the Museum based on certain aspects of the current housing code with the help of NYC’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. It should in no way be considered an official document or interpreted to reflect the full scope of housing code enforcement today. If you have a question about code enforcement or have a problem in your building, please the City’s Citizen Service Center at: 311 or (212) NEW-YORK. For TTY, call (212) 504-4115.

- Posted by Sarah Litvin

Back to School Special, Part II

Exhaulted literary critic Alfred Kazin grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn in the 1910s and 20s. The neighborhood then was a working-class, mostly Jewish place, full of row houses and tenement buildings. Kazin documents his early life in A Walker in the City, published in 1951.

Brownsville, Brooklyn: A general view across the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. About 1920. Eugene L. Armbruster Collection, NYPL.

Of special interest to us are his ruminations on how education was tied to success and Americanization. The son of immigrants, Kazin felt, even as a child, the pressure to represent his parents in this strange new world.

Here's an excerpt from A Walker in the City:

When I passed the school, I went sick with all my old fear of it. ...I felt as if I had been mustered back into the service of those Friday morning "tests" that were the terror of my childhood.

It was never learning I associated with that school: only the necessity to succeed, to get ahead of the others in the daily struggle to "make a good impression" on our teachers, who grimly, wearily, and often with ill-concealed distaste watched against our relapsing into the natural savagery they expected of Brownsville boys...

It was not just our quickness and memory that were always being tested. Above all, ...it was our character. I always felt anxious, when I heard the word pronounced. ...Character was never something you had; it had to be trained in you, like a technique. I was never very clear about it. On our side character meant demonstrative obedience.

I was awed by this system, I believed in it, I respected its force...

I worked on a hairline between triumph and catastrophe. Why the odds should always have felt so narrow I understood only when I realized how little my parents thought of their own lives.

It was not for myself alone that I was expected to shine, but for them - to redeem the constant anxiety of their existence. I was the first American child, their offering to the strange new God; I was to be the monument of their liberation from the shame of being — what they were. And that there was shame in this was a fact that everyone seemed to believe as a matter of course...

It was in the sickening invocation of “Americanization,” the word itself accusing us of everything we apparently were not.

- Posted by Kate Stober

Questions for Curatorial - Back to School Special

Curatorial Director Dave answers your questions... this time, about going to school in turn-of-the-century New York.

Did the Gumpertz, Levine, Rogarshevsky, and Baldizzi children have to attend school and, if so, did they attend public school or private school?

In 1874, New York State passed a compulsory school law requiring children between the ages of 8 and 14 to attend some public or private day school at least 14 weeks each year. Twenty years later, the Compulsory Education Law of 1894 required full-time attendance from 8 to 12 years of age. Children older than 14 were not required to go to school. The Gumpertz, Levine, Rogarshevsky, and Baldizzi children were therefore required by state law to attend school until the age of 14.

As working-class immigrants, the families of 97 Orchard Street would not have had the necessary resources to send their children to private school. Although New York City’s public facilities remained inadequate to serve a growing population of children, many of who were immigrants, the children of 97 Orchard Street could have attended school at one of several public institutions.

One of those is P. S. 42, which has been educating children from immigrant families for over one hundred and ten years. When the school opened in 1898, students were mainly Italian and Jewish. The Greater City of New York had half-a-million students by 1898, and by 1914 would have 900,000. Today, the student body is primarily Chinese and Hispanic immigrants or the children of immigrants.

When the first citywide curriculum was adopted in 1903, 70% of public school students in the city were either immigrants or the children of immigrants. Thirty years later, in 1933, the student population remained heavily immigrant. After graduating from the eighth grade, the majority went to work during the day, many returning to night school for advanced classes.

At the turn of the century, Americanization was the focus of the curriculum – forging a common identity among children from different cultures. In 1898, the Superintendent of Schools, William Maxwell, believed that the role of the school was to do more than merely instruct: “It accustoms people of different creeds and different national traditions to live together on terms of peace and mutual good will. It is the melting pot which converts the children of immigrants of all races and languages into sturdy, independent American citizens.”

Nationalities of students who attended P.S. 42 in 1933. The card shows over 600 students with Italian-born fathers, over 300 with Russian-born fathers, and 160 with American-born fathers. 56 are listed as "indefinite."