ILC Teacher Reviews Tenement Museum
The Tenement Museum
Visiting the Tenement Museum is like taking a journey back through time, to the early years of the great migrations of immigrants to the Lower East Side (LES) of Manhattan. (Using the vernacular of the LES residents, one lives on the LES, not in the LES.) The immigration to the LES is roughly divided into two “waves” . The first wave of immigrants to settle on the LES, were the German-Jewish people who immigrated to the United States during the 1860s through the late 1890s. The Italian-Catholics were the second wave of immigrants to settle on the LES, from the turn of the 20th Century until, approximately, 1935.
The tour begins at the front steps of 97 Orchard Street. This is one of two tenement buildings owned by the museum. This building was purchased by The Tenement Museum in 1988, at the beginning of the gentrification period in Manhattan. After purchasing this building, the curators began restoring the first of 16 tenement units at this address. Currently, there are six restored tenements and a seventh undergoing restoration. The museum curators have fully documented several of the families that lived at 97 Orchard Street between the years 1873 through 1935. The curators use this information, (based on archived material) – immigration papers, marriage/birth/death certificates, property deeds, photographs, etcetera, to assemble several tours about the various immigrant families that occupied this building during this time period. The museum conducts six tours based on different families that lived at 97 Orchard Street between the years of 1865 through 1935. This tour is about the Gumpertz and Baldizzi families, “Getting By: Immigrants Weathering Hard Times.
Before the tour begins, the guide explains that the word “tenements” has now taken on the connotation of “slums”, but “anyone who currently lives in an apartment and pays rent is technically a tenant, who lives in a tenement.”
Upon entering the building at 97 Orchard Street, there is an immediate feeling of being closeted inside of a very small and dark area. Only a thin shaft of light from the window in the front door keeps the hallway from being completely dark. The tour guide mentions that the window in the door was a later addition, added sometime around the turn of the century. The earlier inhabitants of this building would have been in complete darkness and would have had to use a candle to navigate the narrow hallway and the steep stairs leading to their tenements on the upper floors. Right next to the stairs is a small shelf called a “candle shelf” once used for this specific purpose. The ground level floor of the building housed a saloon. As was often the case, most of the ground level units were occupied by businesses owned by the landlords.
The first tenement on the tour is that of the Gumpertz family. The family lived in this tenement during the 1870s and 1880s on the second floor in one of the building’s interior units. The interior units have no windows, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, (except for water that was brought in) and, no toilet, except for the one outhouse that was located in back of the building and used by hundreds of people each day. The cramped and crowded quarters consist of a small living area where the parents slept at night and a tiny bedroom where one mattress made do for the children, no matter how many. There is a small kitchen with a coal-burning stove that was used for cooking, as well as, the family’s sole source of heat. During the cold winter months the family lived mostly in the kitchen – the only warm place in the home. In the summer months, the family would stay outside as often as possible to avoid the stifling conditions within the tenement building.
According to the museum’s documentation, shortly after their arrival to the United States, Mr. Gumpertz disappeared. No one knows what happened to him, but it is likely that he abandoned his family. During this time period, men often abandoned their “first” families and began a second one, possibly “out West”. During the 1800s there was no public assistance, so Mrs. Gumpertz had to borrow money from the landlord. It was common practice for the immigrant families to borrow money from the shop owners and landlords, or for the landlords to not collect on rents until the families finances improved. Mrs. Gumpertz owned a sewing machine so she made clothes at her home and sold them to various shops in the neighborhood. This work enabled her to support herself and her family and, in time, to pay back the loan to the landlord. Eventually she saved enough money to buy a house. The museums records on the Gumpertz family end at this point.
The second part of the tour is a visit to the Baldizzi family tenement. This family emigrated from Palermo, Sicily, at the turn of the 20th Century, during the second wave of immigrants to the Lower East Side. There is a striking difference between the Gumpertz and the Baldizzi tenements. The Gumpertz family unit has no electricity, no windows, no indoor plumbing, and only one coal-burning stove for cooking and heating the entire flat. Conversely, the Baldizzi family unit has electricity, indoor plumbing, windows, and two stoves, one for cooking and heating and another, in the living room as an additional heat source. The unit also has a small metal tub in the kitchen. The tub was multi-purpose, used for both washing clothes and for the weekly baths. The family did share one toilet facility with the other tenants on their floor, but this was a vast improvement over the earlier immigrants situation, when hundreds of people shared one facility.
The Baldizzi unit faces the front of the tenement building. The rooms are flooded with daylight. The tour guide, always diligent about conducting the tour through the prism of the immigrant’s lens, stated that this was not the view during the time that the family lived here. During that time, there were dozens more tenement buildings on the Lower East Side. The family would have been looking out the window at another tenement building, and the rooms, now flooded with sunlight, would have had only partial daylight. Only during later years, when many of the tenement buildings were razed and the city widened the streets and planted trees, did the area become picturesque.
A very interesting part of the tour is a tape recording by one of the Baldizzi daughters describing, in vivid detail, her childhood experiences living on the Lower East Side. She had heard about the Tenement Museum’s restoration of her childhood home. She contacted the museum and became enthusiastically involved in helping the curators authenticate her childhood home. Not only did she record her memories, she also contributed several items to the museum to place on display in her former residence.
Standing in this tenement – surrounded by household items and furnishings that were used by the family and listening to the memories of this woman describing what it was like to live on the Lower East Side during the early part of the twentieth century – is an experience like no other. For a moment in time, the early immigrant experience seems to literally come to life!
The last tenement on the tour is a “work-in-progress.” The tenement is a reflection of the living conditions that existed throughout the following years, from the 1930s through the 1980s. During this time, the building continued to be inhabited by the newest immigrants. Other than a few modern conveniences, the new immigrants experienced an environment very similar to those of the earlier immigrants. It wasn’t until the late1980s and the onset of gentrification that the tenement buildings on the LES began showing signs of improvement. This, unsurprisingly, is when all the remaining tenants at 97 Orchard Street received eviction notices.
At the end of the tour, the guide explained that the museum is “in a race against time” to buy the few remaining tenement buildings on the Lower East Side before they are all purchased by young professionals, who now find the LES a highly desirable place to live. The tenements that originally cost thirty cents a week to rent now cost two thousand dollars a month. Times really have changed!
Doreen Eramian
ESL Instructor
The Immigrant Learning Center