New York Part 2

Today is one that I had been looking forward to for quite awhile, a visit to the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. I firmly thought when I was looking into this that I would be going on my own and that was ok but Cheryl decided she was interested too so we happily set off together. Our first thing was to successfully hail a cab and get to our destination. Well we did pretty well I might add on only our second try we hailed one and made our way there. We did leave early as we weren't sure whether the traffic would be as bad on a weekend as a week day and we made it with plenty of time to spare. We found a coffee shop and enjoyed a very nice coffee while we waited. We went for a walk around for a bit and then made our way back to the museum to get our tickets.

Our tour guide was Scott who when introducing himself told us that he had ancestors who came from around the neighbourhood we were in. He asked us to introduce ourselves and I very poorly didn't introduce my friend Cheryl only myself. There were people in our group who had just come out of interest but one lady's mother had actually taught in the Lower East Side around where we were. Once inside it was like stepping back in time, not only of the period but also as a guide at Susannah Place Museum it was exactly like being there.

The 5 storey brick tenement at 97 Orchard Street was home to over 7000 tenants from over 20 nations between 1863 and 1935. It was built by Lukas Glockner in 1863.

The tour we did was called Hard Times and told the stories of the German-Jewish Gumpertz family who lived there in the late 1800s and the Italian Catholic Baldizzi family who lived there through the Great Depression. The tour name is about how these two families survived during times of great hardship, these being the Panic of 1873 and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The initial part of the tour is looking at the building as it was found after being closed up since 1935 when the tenants moved out due the tenement not being up to the fire codes of the times. We then moved into recreated and restored apartments of the two families telling us their stories of how they lived and worked.

I won't go into too much detail (there was so much detail I can't recall it all)  needless to say the families of those days were made of hearty stock and survived by using everything they could. We both really enjoyed the tour and the experience was fabulous.

After the tenants moved out the building was left vacant but the shops on the ground floors still managed to stay open as the laws were different for businesses. In the Gumpertz apartment there are two remnants of what kind of business was in the building and these were the only clues they had. One was a sign near a fireplace saying "Pants made to order $1.50" and an inventory of clothing which had been written on a door jamb which lead the historians to believe that there was a tailor's shop in the building and the tailor had used the apartments as storage but other than those 2 things they have no other record of it being there. That's what I love about history all the minute details that tell a story.

If you would like to read a bit more about the museum follow the link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_East_Side_Tenement_Museum

After our tour we had a bit if time to kill before our walking tour began at 2pm. We knew that the iconic Katz's Deli, a Lower East Side institution was close by so we set off to find it and maybe have lunch there. We did find it while walking the intriguing streets but once we rounded the corner and saw the line to get we decided it was enough to have seen it and didn't go in. The line was being monitored by a security guard so I dare say that things might get a bit heated there sometimes.

We found some lunch and went back for the next tour Then and Now a walking tour about how residents have shaped the neighbourhood in which they lived. Our tour guide this time Jaykub again a local New Yorker. This tour didn't end up being exactly what I thought it would be as I thought it would go into what people did in the tenements around the neighbourhood but instead it was about the changes that had happened as part of progress and how people have tried to preserve what they had. Still a good tour though. It took us to a number of sites and like everything with progress places disappear to be replaced with infrastructure like roads and tunnels. In one place we stood on a very wide median strip and we looked at the buildings on either side and Jaykub asked what we noticed and a couple of people gave up some ideas and it turned out that where were standing had originally had houses on it but the houses were demolished to make the street wider and in some cases the back of the building were literally cut off. So one side of the street you still have the lovely facade of the building and on the other it is flat and looks cut off. This was apparently a common practice.

Cut off building on one side of the road

Building on the opposite side

Lots of interesting buildings and like a lot of historic districts the old sometimes blends in with the new.

This tenement is actually only a few years old as the original one was demolished.
Looks new but still tries to be  part of the neighbourhood.

A previous Jewish Synagogue now privately owned .
The Star of David window has been changed to look like a vortex hole.

One building very similar to our terraces not a tenement .
A single dwelling.

We finish our tour and by this time it was  quite late so we made our way home and tonight's dinner was a pizza across the road. Another day done and dusted in the city that never sleeps.