If these walls could talk...

A wallpaper excavation, layer by layer

Wallpaper was soaked, then carefully removed in small patches foranalysis.

These samples, some with faint designs, and others with maker's marks,were then examined on-site or taken to a lab for analysis.

In that decade,thirty-four wallpaper manufacturers competed in the hot New York City market,resulting in a total of 200,000 rolls of paper produced annually and affordableprices for almost any consumer looking to decorate "on the cheap."

Manufacturers knew their market and advertised accordingly. Patternbooks were distributed, offering everything from simple floral designs toswirling arabesques and medallions.

In many cases, these patterns mimicked and even rivaled those available towealthier consumers. A 1913 Sear Roebuck catalogue advertised a textured bronzesample for fourteen cents per double roll. This, along with silver ground paper,matching borders and ceiling papers, made high class home decorating in thetenements very affordable.

The company went to great lengths to promote wallpaper as a form of modern art, going so far as to exhibit at the 1893 World Columbian Exhibition. These "art" papers, as they were called, were often made with heavy, high-grade stock and featured designs inspired by the new, wildly popular "Arts and Crafts Movement" that swept New York just after the turn of the century.

Either because of landlord neglect or a tenant's desire to express his or her own personal tastes through decorative treatments, wallpapers eventually differed from apartment to apartment. In some cases, up to twenty-three layers of paper were found on the walls, suggesting that the affordability of wallpaper, as well as the high turnover of tenement dwellers, led to frequent re-decoration of the apartments.

While an effective technological method for wallpaper removal was developed in 1905, most tenants were left to their own devices. One method was to douse old layers with hot water and scrape them away with a knife; another was to simply rip off portions that were loose and paper over the rest.

Even so, tenants displayed plenty of other decorative items throughout the home. When they had the money to purchase decorations, tenants would cover the unsightly elements of their spaces with more pleasing ornamentation. Lace doilies, Currier and Ives prints, and hand painted stenciling were simple, cost-effective ways to ensure that a tenement apartment exuded as much warmth as the apartments of wealthier New Yorkers.

Many reforms were of great help to tenants: "dumbbell" tenements were built, which created airshafts for previously unventilated rooms; toilets were required for every floor of a tenement building.

However, other reforms were more of a headache than a help. One of these was the restriction of wallpaper.

Because most layers of paper were difficult to remove and were, on occasion, left dirty prior to the application of new layers, reformers felt that grimy tenement walls were an open invitation to vermin of all kinds. In addition to these layers, adhesives made of flour and water were often used to attach the paper - also a treat for hungry insects, the reformers complained.

Though there was scant evidence to prove that wallpaper was actually creating these problems, the Department banned the use of wallpaper. The suggested replacement was yellow or white paint. Tenants at 97 Orchard Street, like tenement-dwellers throughout the city, offered up an apt response: they ignored the law and continued to paper their walls.

Today, we are fortunate to have 97 Orchard Street, with its peeling walls and rusty gas fixtures, as a physical record of the lives our ancestors led in this country. Not only does it give us a sense of the struggles fought by immigrants in the past, it gives us a fresh perspective on the equally powerful stories of immigrants coming to the U.S. today.

Photos of 97 Orchard Street ->