The Lower East Side Tenement Museum is dedicated to telling the story of the immigrants who lived in New York from the 1860 to the 1930s. It's a story worth telling, say the museum curators, because it "gives a sense of the struggles of the immigrants in the past...and a fresh perspective on the equally powerful stories of immigrants coming to the U.S. today." Perhaps the greatest difficulty in telling the story of the Lower East Side is the lack of material culture that has survived for contemporary analysis. Items like clothing, furniture, jewelry, toys, wall-coverings and rugs have all but disappeared into junk-piles. A hundred years ago, no one saw the worth of preserving the stories and material possessions of the urban poor.
Like urban sleuths, museum curators are uncovering the history of the tenement building at 97 Orchard Street. They comb through city records, find, analyze and preserve artifacts, even excavate layers of wallpaper covering the rooms of the tenement. (Read a story about the museum's wallpaper excavation.)
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While not a grand home, 97 Orchard Street was far from a slum when it opened to tenants in 1864. It represented a solid step up from the dilapidated row houses that accommodated much of New York's burgeoning immigrant population at the time. Built by a German immigrant, Lukas Glockner, the building represented a chance for the owner -- and the tenants -- to build a better life in America.
Glockner reaped an ample income from rentals, until it was sold in 1886 for $29,000, nearly four times the initial construction cost. Glockner carefully managed the tenement while he owned it, perhaps because he and his family also lived there.
The Museum has found evidence that Glockner painted the walls and stained the woodwork of all of the apartments regularly throughout his ownership of the building. When 97 was opened to tenants, water-based calcimine paints in stunning pastels graced the walls. When oil-based paints were more readily available in the 1870s, Glockner favored these, using a simple color scheme of terra cotta in the front rooms, and blue or green in the kitchens and back bedrooms.
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(For a larger view, click on any picture) |
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By 1930, the building had deteriorated, a victim of the devastating Great Depression and absentee owners. 97 Orchard Street was not alone in its descent from a proud building to a slum. The New York City Housing Authority was created in 1934 to deal with unsanitary and deplorable conditions of many of the tenement buildings in the Lower East Side. Fully half of the buildings lacked central heat and bathrooms in the apartments.
Faced with the prospect of making costly improvements in harsh economic times, many owners simply evicted tenants and boarded up buildings.
In 1935, the tenants of 97 Orchard Street were abruptly evicted as tenement reforms swept the city. The building was never again used for housing.
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum Web site is rich with history and photos of 97 Orchard Street, the families that lived there, and life in New York's Lower East Side. The site also has a small online book store and offers information about visiting the Museum.
