A step into the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in Manhattan is a step back in time. The museum, the only one of its kind in the US, showcases the ordinary lives of four immigrant families from different countries who lived in the building at various times. The place where they lived, 97 Orchard Street, was one of the first tenements built in New York City. The Tenement Tour showcases three carefully restored apartments, and with the help of docents, or guides, (many of whom are immigrants), visitors learn about the lives of former residents: the Gumpertzs, a German-Jewish family who lived there in the 1870s; the Rogarshevskys, an Eastern European Orthodox Jewish family, who lived there in 1918; and the Baldizzis, an Italian Catholic family who lived in a furnished apartment during the Depression. The Confino Program, a second tour, is a living history event where visitors meet and talk to Victoria Confino, a Sephardic Jewish 14-year-old from Turkey who lived in the fourth restored apartment in 1916.
"Observers in the 1860s and 1870s reported that New York was the most Irish of cities in the country, with almost one quarter of the city's residents Irish-born," says Benjamin Trimmier, the museum's public relations spokesman. Despite this, no New York City museum has an exhibit documenting the Irish experience.
The museum plans to change that by opening an Irish family apartment in the building when the relevant documentation, such as a birth or death certificate, has been found proving a particular family lived in the tenement, says Steve Long, the museum's curator. The goal is to have the Irish family in situ there sometime next year.
It is the first time that Irish immigrants' lives will be depicted in a permanent exhibit in a National Historic Site. The private not-for-profit, property, which is also listed with the US National Trust for Historic Preservation, recently received a $15,000 from the New York State Council on the Arts, or NYSCA, and this will be used, beginning in March, to research the genealogy of Irish families that lived in the tenement at different times, according to Long. Eleven Irish families with the surnames of Dineen, Sullivan, Kennedy, Byrne, and several different Murphy families are being investigated; so far, four main prospects have emerged: Jeremiah Sullivan, Thomas Driene, Charles Dineen and Thomas Feeley. The first three were tracked through Civil War draft records, while the fourth was found through Immigrant Savings Bank documents.
Up to now, most of the information gathered has been on Dineen. However, the family that illuminates a historical issue with contemporary ramifications will be the one chosen for the apartment. "A lot of this is detective work for us. We don't know what we'll find," says Long, of the slow, time-consuming procedure. Research in genealogy - as well as looking into the kinds of things an Irish immigrant family would likely have put in their home - will start soon. And the context of their lives, such as the types of jobs immigrants held, will also be examined. "I should have a much better sense about the family in the summer," says Long. Between 1863 and 1935, 97 Orchard Street housed approximately 7,000 people from more than 20 countries in its five-storey, 20-apartment structure. In 1935, the building was closed up for 50 years, with the exception of the ground floor commercial spaces and the janitor's apartment, because the landlord was unwilling to pay for legally-required fireproofing of hallways which had been an amendment to the 1929 Multiple Dwelling Act.
After most of the tenants were evicted, the building remained untouched, in a kind of time capsule. It was purchased in 1988 for $750,000 to promote tolerance and historical perspective through the presentation and interpretation of the variety of immigrant and migrant experiences on Manhattan's Lower East Side, a gateway to America. "I hoped to bring `longer rooted' Americans home to meet their forebears - before they were acceptable, before they spoke English, and knew the customs of the country," explains the co-founder and museum president, Ruth Abram, as her reason for establishing the museum. "My hope has always been that by tapping into the reverence Americans have for the pioneers in their own families, they might extend that appreciation to immigrant families in that same situation today," she continues.
"The word `tenement' means to hold, and is defined as a multi-family dwelling that is home to three or more families - when it was built there were no building regulations," says Kate Lushpenko, our guide, at the start of the one-hour Tenement Tour. Lucas Glockner, the tenement's first owner, was a slum landlord. "The Lower East Side in the 1860s was the most populated place per acre on Earth, and the streets were narrow and crowded with vendors," says Lushpenko, drawing a vivid picture of the period.
THE red-bricked building halls were dark up to 1900. Our guide switches off the entrance hall light to show what it was like before gaslight was installed. Five years later, landlords were required to have one indoor lavatory for every two families; up to then, about 120 residents used six latrines in the back garden. Disease was rife and there was 40 per cent infant mortality in the early 20th Century. Nathalie Gumpertz's neat, sparse, sombre second-floor apartment shows what her life was like in the 1870s after Julius, her husband, deserted her, leaving her with four children to support. Family abandonment was common during periods of tough economic times. Gumpertz became a seamstress and made $8 a week; a Singer sewing machine and sewing accoutrements sit close to the window. Nine years later, she had him declared dead so she could claim $600 from her husband's father who had died.
"Ten family members slept in the 325 sq ft apartment, including three on one bedroom floor," says the actress portraying Victoria Confino, of the Confino Program, to her visitors in the museum's interactive second tenement tour. We are now, under our guide's instructions, pretending to be newly arrived immigrants seeking information from a fellow immigrant (and actress) on how to survive in our new homeland.
The Confinos lived in that particular apartment in the early 20th Century, and like the lives of the three families shown during the Tenement Tour, they are only included when census, court or voter records show they resided there.
"The most important thing to buy was a stove for cooking and heat which would cost about $20, $5 more than the monthly rent," Confino advises one visitor who asks what was the vital possession to have for a newly-acquired apartment. "And there was running water in the apartment," she says, proudly showing the large sink used for washing clothes. Two cent showers had to be taken elsewhere, and the hall outside had two shared toilets.
"I work four unpaid hours a day sewing garments for my father who rents space in a garment factory," Confino tells us. "After that, I clean the three-room apartment. My brothers David (12), and Saul (9), work after school as newspaper boys." The museum also plans to open an apartment that will interpret an 1893 sweatshop, and to restore two more apartments, making a total of eight wonderful slices of history.
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum is at 97 Orchard Street, Manhattan, New York City, 10002. Phone 212 431 0233. E-mail: lestmattenement.org Website www.tenement.org The Lower East Side Tenement Museum is at 97 Orchard Street, Manhattan, New York City, 10002.
E-mail: lestm@tenement.org
Website www.tenement.org