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TENEMENT MUSEUM & ELDRIDGE STREET SYNAGOGUE
 

The Lower East Side-Tenement Museum (90 Orchid Street) was the first tenement building to be designated as a National Historical Landmark. Its focus is a restored tenement building (located at 97 Orchid Street). It retells the struggles, realities and experiences of the working-class immigrants who lived there. Built in 1863, the tenement building predates virtually every housing law in the United States.

97 Orchard Street is a five-story brick building decorated with
“Italianate-style” architectural elements. But the structure of the building is quite simple: two brick-masonry walls, spanned by wooden beams, stood upon a foundation of stone, two feet thick. When 97 Orchard Street was built, it had twenty apartments. Each floor had four three-room apartments. When it was constructed, 97 Orchard Street had no indoor plumbing, no gas, and only one room in each apartment benefited from direct sunlight. Gas lines were brought into the neighborhood by the 1880s, but there were no housing laws requiring a landlord to install either indoor plumbing or gas before 1901. Running water and flush toilets were installed in 1905. Electricity wasn’t available in the building until around 1924.

In 1988, 97 Orchard Street became the home of the Lower
East Side Tenement Museum.

Visit the virtual tenement at www.wnet.org/tenement

Also on the Lower East Side is this restored 1887 synagogue (located on Eldridge Street, just below Canal Street; Tel 219-0888). The Eldridge Street Synagogue was the first large-scale building constructed by Eastern European immigrants in New York. Built at a cost of $100,000, people marveled at the imposing Moorish-style building, with its 70-foot-high vaulted ceiling, magnificent stained glass rose windows, elaborate brass fixtures and hand-stenciled walls.

In the years before World War I, as many as 1,000 people attended holiday services. Membership began to dwindle in the 1920s when U.S. immigration laws restricted the flow of immigrants into the Lower East Side. The Synagogue began to decay and was closed in the mid 1950's.

Designated a city landmark in the 1980’s, the Synagogue has now been restored by the Eldridge Street Project.

Visit the official site at www.eldridgestreet.org

  • Why was the tenement museum created?
  • In what way might its existence reinvent the past?
  • What role does the Tenement Museum play in the local community?
  • What readings of the immigrant experience do the Tenement Museum and Eldridge Street Synagogue provide?
  • What does its construction and subsequent decline tell us about the changing fortunes and experiences of New York's Jewish community?
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