NYC’s Tenement Museum: Goosebumps guaranteed
A highlight from my trip to NYC. I’m gonna call this one ‘A Fruitful Call of Nature’…
Back in the late ‘80s a social activist and a social historian found themselves together at one of life’s crossroads on the lookout for the perfect passion project that would open New Yorkers’ hearts to their immigrant heritage. So maybe it was fate that when looking for the loo at a property they were visiting one day on the Lower East Side, their curiosity was piqued by a boarded-up stairway...
Discovering that the building had been deemed unfit for habitation half a century earlier what lay behind was an untouched time capsule (think 7 layers of flooring, 22 of wallpaper, toys under floorboards, century-old prayer cards…) and thus a project was born: a resolution to shine a light on the everyday people who’d lived there.
That building on Orchard Street is now The Tenement Museum and here the former dwellers’ apartments have been faithfully preserved and dressed – each accurately reflecting not just the belongings these brave souls pitched up with on arrival in the US, but their unique backstories, customs, tongues, religions, hopes and fears – much of the detail authentically informed by old folks who’d actually lived there as kids.
I got to know the Rogarshevskys whose Henry recalled the family scramble to sleep nearest the stove. Their neighbours the Baldizzis, Mamma earning the ‘hood nickname ‘Shine-em-up-Sadie’ on account of her fondness of soap. And the Epstein sisters who used their record player to ‘turn them American’ after their parents emerged from WW2 their families’ sole survivors.
And then we sat in the spot where the Puerto Rican Saez Velez huddled around their TV when programmes in Spanish were finally broadcast, our guide telling us their stories with tears in her eyes even though she’s told them so many times before.
As we all perched on Ramonita’s kitsch settee, I couldn’t help but wonder what she’d think of us all sitting around in her apartment talking her tales. But then something about her photo told me she’d be ok with that. What do you think?
