Tenement History and Immigrant Life in the Lower East Side

Duration

3 Hours

About

This tour lays out in detail the evolution of the tenement from rookies and shanties to 7-story walk-ups. We cover the history of the area from rustic farmland to early mercantile life when The Five Points was a neighborhood of pre-tenement slums, to a later disastrous history of tenement housing that would stretch across the Bowery and the Lower East Side.

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The Lower East Side is iconic for its immigrant history, and it's incredible how much cultural variety was packed into the relatively few blocks of this tour. Neighborhoods that repeatedly changed through massive waves of Irish, German, Italian and Jewish communities saw a kaleidoscope of peoples up against the same grueling challenges of tenement life.

Along the tour we'll see how ever-taller tenements, with ever-larger air shafts, reflect the decades long race between laws to guarantee air and sunlight to dark, inner rooms, and developers who sought to build as much square footage as possible. It was also a simple reality that until mass transit. there was never enough housing for the seemingly never ending waves of humanity.

We see how different communities responded to their new life and conditions in New York. Some came largely as single bachelor males, like the Chinese and Italians, some came as whole families like the late 19th century Jewish immigration. Images from Jacob Riis, reports from health inspectors, and descriptions from settlement workers bring the gang life, drinking culture, markets and street scenes to life.

In most all cases we have access to rooftop of the Indigo Hotel where we end the tour with spectacular views of the tenements and the Midtown skyline.