April 13, 2009

New Tenement Museum tour of the Lower East Side

NewYorkology contributor Christina Ziegler-McPherson is a public historian in one of New York’s “sixth boroughs” — Hoboken. A specialist in American immigration and social welfare policy, she regularly crosses the river to partake of New York’s many historical sites, institutions, and events. She’s the author of the book “Americanization in the States: Immigrant Social Welfare Policy, Citizenship, and National Identity in the United States, 1908-1929,” which will be published this summer. She recently took in a preview of the Tenement Museum’s newest neighborhood walking tour.

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum has begun a new walking tour that explores the richness of everyday life on the Lower East Side.

The 90-minute “Immigrant Soles” tour focuses on the immigrant experience of the Lower East Side from the 1860s-1930s. The tour seeks to give the visitor a sense of how the former residents of the museum’s site, 97 Orchard St., (map,) and their neighbors lived their daily lives — where they worked, worshipped, shopped, played, and went to school.

Along the way, the tour walks by several historic sites of the Lower East Side, including one of the oldest buildings in the neighborhood, 68 Orchard St., a two-story structure built in 1825 that once housed a German saloon; a former department store at the corner of Grand and Orchard streets; Public School 42, which opened in 1898 and was where 97 Orchard St. resident Josephine Baldizzi went to school in the 1930s; the site of the Jarmulowsky bank at the corner of Canal and Orchard streets, and what was once an old movie theater at Division and Canal streets.

More well known sites on the tour are the Eldridge Street Synagogue, now a national landmark, Seward Park and the Jewish Daily Forward newspaper office at 175 East Broadway across from Straus Square, (which was named for Macy’s owner Nathan Straus, a German Jewish merchant and philanthropist.) The tour also strolls along Allen Street, which was once the Lower East Side’s Red Light District and site of much of the crime committed in the neighborhood. The tour ends by the Essex Street Market near Rivington, a site that is also covered in the museum’s Lower East Side Stories walking tour.

Unlike some walking tours available in the city, this one is well researched. As an educational institution, the Tenement Museum places heavy emphasis on historic accuracy, and carefully documents its exhibits and programs. In the case of the “Immigrant Soles” walking tour, the museum has used old newspaper articles, maps, photos, and various government reports, including those of tenement inspectors. Even the stories of prostitution under the elevated train on Allen Street are carefully documented with police reports and materials from the Bureau of Social Morals, a Jewish vice squad that tried to keep women from entering prostitution.

The tour starts on Orchard at Delancey, goes south to Hester Street, continues to Eldridge Street (the site of the recently restored Eldridge Street Synagogue,) down to Division Street, east to Straus Square and Seward Park, and back up Essex Street.

“Immigrant Soles” is the Tenement Museum’s second walking tour. The other, the Lower East Side Stories walking tour, focuses on housing policy and reform, a topic near and dear to the heart of a museum located in a former tenement house.

The “Immigrant Soles” is the first in a planned series of walking tours the museum is developing that will explore the Lower East Side’s immigrant heritage. A third tour in the planning stage will focus on the residents of the museum’s new building at 103 Orchard and will examine the immigrant experiences of Dominican, Chinese, and other groups who settled in the neighborhood after World War II.

Tickets are $17 for adults, and $16 for students and seniors. The tour can be taken in conjunction with a tour of the tenement for $26 ($21 for students and seniors.) The tour, which is currently only offered Saturday and Sunday once a day, is planned to expand to twice a day in summer. (On the ticketing website, it’s currently listed as the Lower East Side Walking Tour.)

April 13, 2009 1:58 PM in Downtown, History, Museums, Sightsology, Tours

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