Love or Loneliness in New York City?: Ariel Sabar and the Heart of the City


 New York City is often described as ‘real’ with its streets pocketing communities and entire cultures. Passing strangers on the sidewalk, one attains glimpses into the most personal details of other people’s lives. National Book Critics Circle Award winning author Ariel Sabar writes, “New York City demands engagement with strangers. The sidewalks and subways are so crowded that we have no choice but to overhear private conversations and see faces at distances normally reserved for intimates.”



 

Photo from aestheticsofjoy.com



The city is so often the proponent and muse for incredible ideas and events. In his newest book Heart of the City: Nine Stories of Love and Serendipity on the Streets of New York, Sabar shares stories of chance meetings and serendipity in New York. He notes, “It seemed like a quintessential New York story: two vastly different people brought together by chance in America’s greatest city. It said a lot about our country, I thought. It showed how immigrants here could leap borders of culture and class in ways unthinkable back home. It showed how in a society as fluid as America’s, any two people could fall in love, anywhere.”

In a city so bustling and alive with people both young and old, the idea of urban loneliness is frequently being challenged. Sabar recently pointed out an interesting New York Magazine article on the subject called “Alone Together.”

Does a place so full of life perpetuate isolation or does it bring people together? What do you think?  Do you have a story of serendipity in the city?

Ariel Sabar will present his new book on Tuesday, February 15th at 6:30 PM at Tenement Talks. Come and share your own thoughts and stories.


--Posted by Amy G.

Questions for Curatorial - Decent Burial

A visitor indicated that the wake process that we talk about on “The Moores” tour was called a "decent burial." The idea was that no matter how poor you were, your last obligation was to provide whiskey and good tobacco for your friends to thank them for mourning you. So even if it put you in debt, you would buy the top-shelf stuff to thank your true friends for their attention during your death. Is this true?

Moore Apartment exhibit, Photograph by Keiko Niwa, Courtesy of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

Yes. During the 19^th century, Irish immigrant families would sometimes go into debt providing a wake and burial for their relatives and loved ones. Both the wake and burial represented important passages in the life of an individual, ensuring that they had a good “send off” and were prepared for the “next life.” While the definition of what comprised a “decent” wake and burial appears to have varied, the responsibility for its provision fell upon the family of the deceased and not on the recently departed themselves. Indeed, although the specific customs of the wake varied depending on the region of origin, the provision of food, drink, and tobacco appear to have been customary throughout Irish America and part of what constituted a “decent” wake and burial.

Visitors of the Week: Roberta and Quinn from Ithaca, New York

Planning a visit to the Tenement Museum? Send us an email and be one of our Visitors of the Week.

Meet Tenement Museum members Roberta and Quinn from Ithaca, New York. Inspired by his mother’s career in architectural history, 11-year-old Quinn decided to focus his school paper on New York City tenements.

How did you hear about tenements, Quinn?

Quinn: My first research topic was Theodore Roosevelt, and he and Jacob Riis were friends. Through that, I learned about tenement buildings.

Which tour did you take today?

Q: We did Immigrant Soles and the Confino Tour.

What did you think of the Confino program?

Q: I thought it was really good. She’s a great actress.

Roberta: It was great, and the other people on the tour were really into it. We loved both tours. What was nice was because we had gone on the walking tour, some of the things that Victoria Confino was mentioning we already knew about because we’d gone on the neighborhood walking tour. I think that the neighborhood tours really complement the building tours. It makes a great package. We’d read a number of books; You can read about it and you can look at pictures. But it’s just not the same as actually being in the space. The issues that were brought up are historical, but it is a lot of the same stuff that’s happening today. How do you deal with difference? Everyone thinks of tenement life as a horrible time—they think of the Gangs of New York, and everything. With the Confino tour, she even said that they were the only [Sephardic] Greeks in the building, but they figured out how to make it work. People lived close together and were managing, even sometimes better than we are managing today.

What are some other things you like to do in the city?

Q: We love to go to museums and we do a lot of walking.

R: We like to walk the bridges. We’ve done the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, the Williamsburg. The 59th street Bridge. And his sister does NYC Swim, so she’s swum Liberty Island and Governor’s Island.

Q: That’s how we discovered Governor’s Island.

R: This July, she’s going to be part of one of the relay teams that’s going around Manhattan. She has her own experience of New York, and Quinn’s Dad grew up in Queens, and went to school in Manhattan. And I did my dissertation on a New York City topic.

You guys are very New York, through and through.

R: Yeah, we just take the bus in. We don’t live here, but I think walking the city is the only way you really learn a city.

When you’re in the neighborhood are there any other places that you like to go?

Q: Laboratorio Del Gelato.

R: Which we saw has moved. And the Essex Street Market, where we’re headed after this. There’s so much to take advantage of. We’ve just begun to pick through the area.

--Posted by Amy Ganser

Tenement Talk of the Day: Pete Hamill

Today's featured Tenement Talk is from Pete Hamill.  The author of eleven novels, a memoir, four works of nonfiction, countless articles and columns as a reporter, editor–in-chief of two city newspapers, and November’s recipient of the Louis Auchincloss Prize, Pete Hamill can in our opinion shed light on almost anything.

We were delighted in December to welcome the Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University to share his thoughts on the contributions of immigrants to New York City.  Listen again to Pete Hamill's Tenement Talk below:

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Visitors of Week: Lisa and Scott from New York

Planning a visit to the Tenement Museum? Send us an email and be one of our Visitors of the Week.

Meet New York natives, Lisa and Scott. After visiting most of the museums that the city has to offer, the husband and wife duo did some researching online and came across our museum.

Scott: We’ve been to the big museums: The Met, Natural History, and MoMA. We came across your website and it seemed really interesting. We just took the Getting By tour and we loved it. It’s definitely a different take on the museum experience.

Are you two both from New York?

S: We grew up in the area. Lisa’s from Long Island and I’m from New Jersey. We’ve been here eight years now.

Do you have any personal or family history in this neighborhood?

Lisa: My grandmother immigrated here from China in the 1920s. She moved to Flushing, Queens.

S: We have no direct connection with this area, but we’ve been down here dozens upon dozens of times. We’re both Jewish and we know that this was one of the bigger Jewish areas growing up in the city back in the day. Just walking the streets you can see the history.

What are your favorite places in this neighborhood?

L: We definitely like to eat down here. There are a lot of good places.

S: Great restaurants, good pubs and shops, and Mom and Pop shops that you’re not going to find somewhere else in the city. It definitely has a lot of character. In terms of people moving to this area, it’s still an up and coming neighborhood. You can see the bigger buildings being built up. The neighborhood changing could be a bad thing. You lose a lot of that history.

And what do you think about the ‘homogenization’ of the Lower East Side?

S: I think it’s okay if it’s done in a way that doesn’t take away from the neighborhood’s history and culture.

L: For me, after this tour, it makes me realize how valuable the city’s history is. This is one of the remaining pieces of the city that still really has its roots. To see it start being modernized makes me a little bit sad.

It's interesting, I just heard that Mulberry Street is actually preserved by an Italian Cultural Institute. Only Italian businesses are able to operate there.  If it weren’t for that, there might not even be a Little Italy at this point.

S: Yeah, it would be highway central around here.

Exactly, and it’s like, what will it be in ten years?

L: A museum like this just helps you appreciate things and gives you a different perspective.

S: We loved the tour and we’ll definitely be back for another one. We’d recommend it to people who are curious to learn about the history and who want to see what the Lower East Side was like back when.

L: Or what life in general was like back in the day.

-- Posted by Amy Ganser

Questions for Curatorial - Coal

Where did the residents of 97 Orchard Street get the coal needed to heat their cast-iron stoves? Where was the coal stored and how was it paid for?

Coal was purchased from a neighborhood coal yard and delivered to 97 Orchard Street where it was deposited in the cellar of the building. During the late 19^th century, the Dougherty Family operated 2 coal yards on the Lower East Side, one at Avenue B and 12^th Street and the other between 280 and 282 Madison Street. It is possible that these were still in operation by the second decade of the 20^th century.

At 91 Orchard Street, there is a coal vault under the sidewalk that was accessible via a manhole on Orchard Street. The front of the cellar at 97 Orchard Street also juts out underneath the sidewalk, but there is not a brick coal vault similar to the one at 91 Orchard Street. At 97 Orchard Street, there may have been a chute for coal to be delivered into the cellar, which was perhaps placed into wooden bins that look similar to horse stalls. 

Indeed, a recently discovered 1905 Department of Buildings drawing detailing existing and proposed alterations mandated by the 1901 Tenement House Act notes approximately eight “wooden houses.” These “wooden houses” may have been used to store coal delivered to 97 Orchard Street. While Museum researchers do not know how each resident paid for the coal they used from the bin, it is possible that the cost of coal was included in each apartment’s monthly rent.

Tenement Talk of the Day: Kenneth Jackson, The Encyclopedia of New York City, 2nd Edition, December 8, 2010

As part of the weekly Tenement Talks series at the Tenement Museum, we were delighted to welcome Kenneth Jackson in December to discuss the 2nd Edition of The Encyclopedia of New York City. 

Kenneth Jackson is the Jacques Barzun Professor of History at Columbia University, where he has chaired the Department of History. The author of the prize-winning Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, he has taught New York City history for four decades.

Ken Jackson with President of the Tenement Museum, Morris Vogel

Sam Roberts wrote in the New York Times that this is an “encyclopedia sure to please and irritate.” Much has changed since the first edition appeared in 1995: the World Trade Center no longer dominates the skyline and a billionaire businessman has become an unlikely three-term mayor. Ken Jackson addressed these changes and shared highlights from the second edition—now updated with 800 new entries, including one on the Lower East Side. Ric Burns, Mike Wallace and Bill Moyers all agree that this award winner is the definitive reference book about New York City.

Ken Jackson's Tenement Talk on the Encylopedia of New York City is available to listen again to here: