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Tenement Museum
Jun. 12th, 2011 05:48 pmOn Friday I went to the Tenement Museum, on the Lower East Side. As suspected, it is not air conditioned, but they do lend you little fans that say, "I am a fan of the Tenement Museum."
The museum is a tenement building built in 1874 and shut down in the 1930s. The museum acquired the building in the eighties (the apartments had been empty for fifty years, but the shops on the first floor stayed open, which is I guess why the owner could keep the rest of the building). They restored the apartments to represent different time periods. You can only go into the museum on a tour. Each tour is about an hour, and you have to book in advance since they can't take many people and they sell out. On each tour, you hear about specific families that lived there. The museum has done a lot of research through public records and contacting descendants of tenants to be as accurate as possible.
The Tenement Museum is also very interested in the immigrant experience up to the present, and offers ESL classes (though the LES is no longer an immigrant mecca--too expensive). They also encourage people on the tour to talk about their own or their families' experiences.
( My impressions )
For New Yorkers/visitors to New York, I would definitely recommend the Tenement Museum, as a way to get a tangible look into the lives of working class immigrants. It's all too easy to only get an impression of New York's past by looking at the houses of families like the Roosevelts or Morgans. This gives a window into what life was like for everybody else.
Also, in one of the apartments, they had a recording of a woman who had grown up in that apartment in the Great Depression, and they recreated it exactly as she recalled. She even donated some of her mother's belongings to the museum. You could really see what life was like in the space. She also recalled it with a great deal of affection, despite how hard life then was, which left the tour on a very hopeful note.
The museum is a tenement building built in 1874 and shut down in the 1930s. The museum acquired the building in the eighties (the apartments had been empty for fifty years, but the shops on the first floor stayed open, which is I guess why the owner could keep the rest of the building). They restored the apartments to represent different time periods. You can only go into the museum on a tour. Each tour is about an hour, and you have to book in advance since they can't take many people and they sell out. On each tour, you hear about specific families that lived there. The museum has done a lot of research through public records and contacting descendants of tenants to be as accurate as possible.
The Tenement Museum is also very interested in the immigrant experience up to the present, and offers ESL classes (though the LES is no longer an immigrant mecca--too expensive). They also encourage people on the tour to talk about their own or their families' experiences.
( My impressions )
For New Yorkers/visitors to New York, I would definitely recommend the Tenement Museum, as a way to get a tangible look into the lives of working class immigrants. It's all too easy to only get an impression of New York's past by looking at the houses of families like the Roosevelts or Morgans. This gives a window into what life was like for everybody else.
Also, in one of the apartments, they had a recording of a woman who had grown up in that apartment in the Great Depression, and they recreated it exactly as she recalled. She even donated some of her mother's belongings to the museum. You could really see what life was like in the space. She also recalled it with a great deal of affection, despite how hard life then was, which left the tour on a very hopeful note.