Tenement Museum

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum is a museum and National Historic Site in Manhattan honoring our nation’s immigrants.  A historic tenement apartment building located at 97 Orchard Street, the museum was home to almost 7,000 working class immigrants to America between 1863 and 1935.  Its apartments abandoned and boarded up after 1935, the building was a time capsule of late-19th to early 20th century life when it was rediscovered in 1988.  Today the Tenement Museum offers guided tours of 97 Orchard Street and the Lower East Side, interpreting the lives and experiences of hard-working families newly arrived in New York City and the USA.

• Learn the history of the Lower East Side, the most densely populated place on Earth during the height of immigration to America
• Compare and contrast the homes of different families in different periods, such as an Irish family of 1869, Eastern European Jewish families from the turn of the century, and an Italian family in the Great Depression
• See how ideas of minimum standards for housing changed over the years, as 97 Orchard Street gradually introduced modern conveniences such as indoor toilets, electric lighting, and gas heating

For more information, visit the official website at http://www.tenement.org/.