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

In the News 100 Years Ago

Every morning, Times Traveler, a New York Times blog, pulls historic headlines and article excerpts from the paper's archive. The August 10th, 1909 issue reports (among other things):

Heat is Deadly; Ouge-Moujis Are in Vogue

Five deaths due to the heat wave were reported yesterday, while some sought relief with air-cooled hats from Java. “The air yesterday in the narrow streets downtown, which were shut in by the high buildings, hung like a dense pall apparently about twenty feet from the ground. The Captain of the Shimosa, which arrived in port from the Far East, reported sighting a small iceberg 300 miles east of Sandy Hook, and the Dock Superintendent asked him why he did not tow it in.… Four peddlers, near the Post Office, attracted attention yesterday offering a new style of Summer hat for sale. It was made of palm leaves like an inverted calabash and lined with green linen. It was raised clear up from the head and supported by tiny pieces of bamboo that were set in a stiff band covered with light leather that fitted firmly to the forehead. This left a space of fully three inches between the hat and the head for the breeze to play through and keep the brain cool. Fifty cents was the price demanded for them, and the attention the purchasers acquired when they put the combined hat-sunshades on was fully worth the money. It was understood that the new headgear was brought by the steamships trading between the port and Sourabaya Java. The peddlers said the “Ouge-Mouji,” as the hats were denominated in Javanese, were equally useful and attractive for women as well as men, but with the exception of a woman who sold newspapers outside one of the Subway stations, the fair sex held aloof.”

Summertime in Coney Island

A hot day at Coney Island. Undated photo. C. Library of Congress.

Coney Island provided a welcome diversion for working-class people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While the streets of Brooklyn or the Lower East Side might be crowded and hot, the beach offered summer breezes and a break from long hours in factories or shops.

For young folks, Coney Island and its amusement parks were also miles away from parents, neighbors, and bosses. Single women and men could enjoy the open-pavilion dance halls, disorient themselves on the rides at Steeplechase Park, or bathe together in the ocean. At Luna Park, visitors (many of them tenement dwellers) could even watch the drama unfold at a staged tenement house fire.

According to the 1901 New York Tribune, by 1900 Coney Island's weekend and holiday visitors numbered 300,000 to 500,000.

Read more at the Coney Island History Site - http://www.westland.net/coneyisland/

Coney Island History Project - http://www.coneyislandhistory.org/

Read about Coney Island excursions in Kathy Peiss's Cheap Amusements:

Underwood & Underwood, 1903. C. Library of Congress

The beach was a tourist destination that some people visited only virtually, through stereoscopic images, one of the most popular forms of contemporary visual media.

Coney Island bathers, 1926. C. Library of Congress.

The crowds at the beach were legendary by the 1920s.

Coney Island, The Chutes, 1900. C. A. Loeffler, Library of Congress.

Visitors to Coney could also enjoy a variety of rides at the amuseument parks lining the beach. The Chutes looks a lot like the "log plume" many of us might remember from our own trips to beach boardwalks and amusement parks.

Coney Island, 1898. C. The Strobridge Lithograph Company, Library of Congress

Some of the rides are visible along the waterfront in this print. Lucy the Elephant was one of the most famous. This drawing also satarizes Coney's crazy, anything-goes reputation.

Destruction of Dreamland, Charles E. Stacy; June 8, 1911; C. Library of Congress.

Dreamland burnt to the ground in 1911. Crowds continued to visit Luna Park well into the 1920s, but as Kathy Peiss remarks, "in many ways, Luna [and perhaps Dreamland as well] emerged at the end, not the beginning, of an era. Its scenic railways and re-enctments of current events were the culmination of Victorian ways of seeing and experiencing." It finally closed in the 1940s. Stepplechase, with its titilating attractions and voyeurism, must have felt a bit more 20th century - that park remained popular for decades longer.

- Posted by Kate Stober

Summer in the City - East River Park

When office manager Frances Pena was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, East River Park, not far from her apartment on Broome Street, was rundown and filled with vagrants. Once the city began to renew itself, starting when Frances' children were young, the esplanade became a bustling community hangout spot, with Little League tournaments, birthday celebrations, jungle gyms, and grassy picnic and sunbathing grounds.

Frances, who now lives in Queens, used to go running on a track alongside the FDR Drive at 5 am and would often run into familiar faces from the neighborhood. (It's a diverse crowd, with Hispanic and other relatively recent immigrants, as well as old-time European-Americans.)

The place gets so packed on the Fourth of July, Frances says, that people camp out the night before to secure one of several public grills or a spot to set up their own. One year Frances' family got to the park at 3 AM and hung around all day, catching the fireworks over the East River almost 20 hours later.

Left, Fourth of July Fireworks as viewed from East River Park. Right, the park's ballfield.

-posted by Liana Grey

Great Summer Eats on the Lower East Side

The Tenement Museum staff sometimes feel as though our lives revolve around the Lower East Side. We give directions to anyone who's carrying a guidebook or looks lost. We offer advice on what to see and do and how long it takes to walk there. And, of course, we tell people where to eat.


Here are our staff picks for best summertime noshes in the neighborhood:

"Quickly on Grand between Chrystie and the Bowery has great bubble tea. I like milk black tea with coffee. They also have fruit-flavored slushies." - Kate, public affairs


"Bario Chino on Broome Street - they open all the windows in the summer." - Amanda, programs & events


"Castillo! Essex!" - Jeff, web/IT


"My favorite cool summer food - hummus and salad for $5.00 from the Kebab place on Orchard and Rivington. Ideal take-out." – Arnhild, buildings & operations


"The new Vietnamese sandwich place on Orchard is great. And of course, Il Laboratorio del Gelato right next door to the Museum." - David, public affairs


"All people must go to Lula's Sweet Apothicary on 6th and A. They serve all manner of vegan frozen treats, and I usually go every Sunday (for Sundaes!)" - Jeffrey, education


"Tiny's is a great sandwich place, good summer food. Sarah Roosevelt Park north of Grand Street is a nice place to go eat your sandwich. There are people selling ices on Delancey Street walking towards the East River, cheap and delicious. And Sixth Ward and Lucky Jack's are favorite happy hour places for a cold beer after work." - Pedro, education








An ice seller on the LES last century

-posted by Kate Stober

Summer in the City

The Lower East Side is a great place to take a stroll in the summertime. Grab an ice cream from an old-fashioned sidewalk cart (the vendors tend to hang around Clinton Street), and head down Essex Street to Seward Park, opened by the government in 1903 as a play space for children and named after the senator that purchased Alaska. And if it gets too hot, slip into an air-conditioned restaurant, boutique, or bookstore - a luxury 19th century New Yorkers didn't have. Museum staff will be sharing their favorite neighborhood activities this week.



Ice cream in New York, the beginning of last century and now. Seems like vendors’ uniforms haven’t changed much over the years.

-posted by Liana Grey