The Tenement Museum: A Glimpse into the Lives of New York City Immigrants

One of the best museums in New York City is tucked away in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, on Orchard Street. Unlike some of the grand buildings along the “Museum Mile” on Fifth Avenue, the buildings that encompass the Tenement Museum are not particularly noteworthy from the outside. On the inside, however, you are transported back in time to the period between the 1860s and 1960s, and you get to see how several immigrant families from all over the world lived and worked.

The Tenement Museum (Wikimedia Commons)

We are certainly very lucky that parts of the building at 97 Orchard street had been shuttered for more than 50 years. When historian Ruth Abram and social activist Anita Jacobson discovered the building in the 1980s, the upper levels were largely untouched from the last years of the building's occupants 50 years prior. Clues as to how the residents lived were left behind: toys, business cards, high holiday tickets, furnishings, decorations and more. The building itself was not in good condition, but shutting off the upper floors so many years ago protected these apartments like a time-capsule.

With the addition of another building at 103 Orchard Street, even more stories are being shared about families who came to New York City from all over the globe to start a new life. Interactive tours bring us through the homes of at least 11 families who lived at 97 or 103 Orchard Street. It has been some time since I last visited the Tenement Museum, but I was not only impressed by the stories shared by our tour guide but also by the amazement and curiosity of the guests with me on the tour.

We visited the apartment of a German family, the Schneiders, as well as an Irish family, the Moores. We learned about how the Schneiders ran a beer saloon on the ground level of 97 Orchard Street from 1864-1886 and that the Moore family arrived in NYC in the mid-1860s to escape the famine in Ireland.  On both tours we get to see a number of personal objects found in these apartments.  The rest has been set up with period-appropriate furniture and decorations to give us an idea of what it may have looked like during their time.

The Tenement Museum offers a range of tours that spans 100 years between the two buildings, and focuses on different families and their stories of struggle and survival as they embarked on a new life in the United States. The museum also offers K-12 school tours, workshops and lesson plans for educational purposes. 

A visit to the Tenement Museum brings our attention to the common thread that most people have with one another. That is to say most people living here can say that they, or their ancestors immigrated here under various circumstances, some by choice and many not. We can look back at our own stories of how our families arrived and when, no matter how far back, and remember that we are all an integral part of our society and culture.

For more information, visit https://www.tenement.org/