Lower East Side Tenement Museum

Thursday 8 June 2006
As it was raining most of yesterday I decided to spend much of the day undercover and dry.I went on two one hour tours of a tenement building in the Lower East side of New York.The Museum has purchased a tenement building some 5 floors tall which was built in 1863 and was lived in till 1935.
Through various historical reports,government papers,relatives and descendants accounts etc the Museum has recreated rooms and apartments from the different eras e.g the 1890s and early 1900s.You get to visit an Italian family apartment and another apartment used as a tailoring shop amongst other rooms.Really interesting as the staff have photos and other records of the people who stayed in the building.
evidently some 7,000 odd people from 20 countries lived in the tenement building.It was a kind of "port of first call" and once people became established and prospered they moved on to better places such as the German dominated "Yorkville" or if you were from Italy to Brooklyn.
I'd recommend the Museum as worth a visit though the first public tours dont seem to start till 1pm and you need either to book on-line or front up at the Museum office on the day for "same day tickets"..