Visiting The Tenement Museum in NYC - Follow Friday

Tenement Museum Visitor Center, 103 Orchard St.

(Digital Images. Photographs Privately Held By Cynthia Shenette; Photographs and Text, Copyright (c) 2013 Cynthia Shenette) As if last year's trip to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty wasn't enough, this week I got to live another dream by visiting the Tenement Museum in New York City.  I always feel that experiencing things first-hand really makes history come alive.  The Tenement Museum offers a fascinating glimpse through a window back in time.  I'd like to share my visit with you and offer a few practical tips if you decide to go.

Tip 1: Plan Ahead If Visiting With Children

My husband was working in NYC for a few days earlier in the week so my son and I decided to go along for some vacation fun in the city.  Monday we visited the American Museum of Natural History and Tuesday we visited the Central Park Zoo.  Why do I mention this?  While my kid IS interested in immigrant history after a unit on immigration at school, going with Mom to the Tenement Museum on a hot July day was not high his list of "Fun Things To Do" in the Big Apple.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, and occasionally I am forced to pull out what I've come to think of as my I-Did-Fun-Stuff-With-You-Now-Just-Make-Mommy-Happy Card. That said, you can make an enjoyable and (relatively) painless trip to the Tenement Museum with your kid or grandkid, but you need to plan right.

Tip 2: Buy Tickets Online, And Follow Tour Age Recommendations

You can buy tickets ahead of time online if you know exactly when and what tour you would like to take. Information can be found on the museum website.  There are several tour options for the building, including Hard Times, Shop Life, Irish Outsiders, and Sweatshop Workers tours.  Pay attention to the age recommendations on the tours if visiting with children. There are also walking tours of the neighborhood, and an opportunity for younger children to meet Victoria Confino, a costumed interpreter playing the part of 14-year-old Greek Sephardic girl who lived in the tenement in 1916.  Given that it was 90 degrees and humid the day we visited we made the obvious choice, the Sweatshop Workers tour.

We did not buy tickets ahead, but I did check online and tickets seemed relatively plentiful on the day we decided to go.  We visited on Wednesday which might be a slightly quieter day given it was in the middle of the week. The museum only allows 15 people on a tour at a time, because of building occupancy regulations, so if you do decide to buy tickets on site be aware that tickets may be sold out by the time you get there.

Tip 3:  Prepare for a Long Cab Ride

The museum is on the Lower East Side, on the corner of Delancey and Orchard.  It is a LONG cab ride in traffic from midtown Manhattan.  Make sure you have a snack and visit the restroom before you leave your hotel. There is a restroom on site and food options close by if you need either before or after your tour.

Tenement Museum, 97 Orchard St.

Tip 4: Enjoy the Tour!

The young woman who was our tour guide was clearly interested and enthusiastic about her job.  She began by asking us where we were all from and at the end gave people the opportunity of sharing their personal immigration stories.  During the hour-long tour she mentioned that 7,000 people lived in 97 Orchard St. over the life of the building!

Not surprisingly, the tenement was dark, close quarters and HOT. The walls were thin and you could see through cracks in the floor boards to the apartments downstairs.  Each tenement consisted of three VERY small rooms.  It's hard to imagine a family with six children living in one small apartment.  How pleasant was it for the mother of a family to walk up and down the stairs multiple times a day to fetch water from the communal pump?  I also suspect privacy in the tenements was nonexistent.

Our tour guide asked my son how old he was.  She talked about how boys my son's age and younger worked as runners in the post-Civil War garment industry to deliver piece goods to workers in tenement sweatshops around the neighborhood. She also talked about how people lived and worked in the same small tenement.  In the early days stitchers and basters worked in the front room and the a presser worked in the kitchen near the coal stove.  Hot coals were placed inside a heavy cast iron and the presser ironed garments all day, sharing kitchen space with the homemaker of the house.  The kitchen was oppressively hot as the stove ran all day, summer and winter, because the presser needed hot coals to do his job.

Tip 5: Shop 'Til You Drop!

Unfortunately, we did not have much time to look around the bookshop because we had to meet my husband back at our hotel.  If you do have the time I suspect the shop is someplace you could lose yourself for an hour (or two).  They seem to have an excellent stock of books and items about New York, immigrants, tenements and the various ethnic groups.  The Tenement Museum does have a shop online if you run out of time on the day of your visit or have a whiny, hot kid who needs a cold drink and a snack.

Tip 6: Follow the Museum on Social Media

I follow the Tenement Museum on Twitter and discovered  that they have a blog.  Interesting posts talk about the discovery of objects under the building's floorboards and elevated trains in NYC.

Tip 7: Plan a Return Visit

My husband will probably have to return to the city sometime in the next couple of months, so I'm already planning another visit.  I would love to do one of the neighborhood walking tours, perhaps on a cooler day without the somewhat bored child in tow.  My guess is that spring and fall are probably nice times to visit, and you'll miss out on the actual sweaty part of the sweatshop experience (That's a good thing unless authenticity is seriously important to you.).

A Final Word...

Everyone I encountered at the museum was pleasant, helpful, and enthusiastic, and when we got out of the museum I asked my son what he thought.  He said, "It wasn't too bad.  It was actually kind of interesting. Except it was hot." which I consider high praise from a ten-year-old boy on a 90 degree day after a museum tour. It might not have been on his Top Ten List, but I'm happy we got to experience the Tenement Museum together.

What was the worst part of our day?  Trying to flag a cab to get back to our hotel!

TAXI!



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My Trip to Ellis Island - Those Places Thursday
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At Liberty! - Wordless Wednesday
Meditation: The Strength of Ordinary Women

My Trip to Ellis Island - Those Places Thursday

(Original Images and Text, Copyright (c) 2012 Cynthia Shenette)  Ellis Island is one of those places that I've wanted to visit for years.  I read an article in Americana magazine (defunct since 1993) that talked about the anticipated opening of the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in 1990.  Before I even read the article my grandmother intrigued me with her talk of the place. When she came to America she was too little to remember anything about it--she was only 18 months old when she made the trip--but it intrigued her as well.  I remember seeing images of Ellis Island before the station's renovation, an abandoned ark of a place that time forgot.  I was thrilled when I heard it was to be fixed up and restored as a museum.  I waited a long time to visit Ellis Island.

I've been so busy lately with a variety of activities I've had little time for much of anything, but when I found out my local chapter of the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists was taking a bus trip for the day to the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the 9-11 Memorial I knew I had to go.  It was lucky happenstance that the trip was scheduled the day before Mother's Day, so it was kind of a special treat to myself for the holiday!  I also bought myself an SLR camera to capture images from the trip!

It was amazing passing the Statue of Liberty and reaching the island by ferry.  What a beautiful, sunny, warm spring day!  I wondered how many thousands of immigrants passed by the Statue on a similar warm spring day, in fear or anticipation about their new new lives in America.  Who did all of those people leave behind?   Mothers?  Fathers?  Siblings?  Or no one. Were they escaping war or economic hardship?  I don't want to sound overly sentimental, but it's awe inspiring to think about the millions of people, my family included, who traveled to Ellis Island by ship, boat, or ferry in just this way.

Several people on my trip recommended the audio tour of the museum.  I didn't take because I wanted to go at my own pace, so for two and a half hours I wandered around the museum, checking out the exhibits and taking pictures as I went along.

The first thing that you see when you walk in the door is the exhibit with piles of luggage stacked in a long line.  I don't know how they did it, but I wonder how the people at Ellis Island managed to keep track of all of that luggage!  Every time my family and I fly somewhere I keep my fingers crossed and hope our luggage meets us at the other end!  The other thing that struck me was the noise--a cacophony of voices echoing in the large room.  I can only imagine what it was like in my grandparents' day with the multitude of languages being spoken--Polish, German, Yiddish, Russian, Dutch--all trying to hear or be heard over the din.

After I checked out the exhibits downstairs I walked upstairs to the Great Hall.  I was kind of surprised that the Great Hall was upstairs, but I guess it makes sense that it would be.  The Great Hall was smaller than I expected. I'm so use to seeing all of those vintage Ellis Island photos with people waiting in lines, that I expected it to be bigger.  There's a great vintage photo here.  It really doesn't look much different today.  They even use similar flags with 48 stars!

How many people waited on those benches and what were they thinking about while they waited?  Again, I could only imagine the sound all of those people must have created--the men, the women, and especially the children--crowded together in that relatively small place.

What was it like to look out those windows and see New York City and America, the land of so many dreams.  I loved the exhibit that talked about the chalk marks immigration officials made on people's clothing to indicate further inspection was in order--CT for trachoma, PG for pregnancy, SC for scalp, X for suspected mental defect, X inside a circle for definite signs of a mental defect, as well as others.  How many women and young girls were mortified by the inspectors medical examinations?  There was a button hook in the display that talked about the examination for trachoma.  How many people's dreams were shattered and ended with a return trip back to their country of origin?

My mom told me that my grandfather use to talk about how Ellis Island was the first place he had ever tried a banana.  It was interesting to read one of the exhibits that talked about the food served to the people passing through the island.  Bananas were mentioned as one of those foods.  I've heard other people mention trying bananas at Ellis Island for the first time as well. Bananas must have made quite an impression on our ancestors to be such a common topic of conversation!

It was interesting just walking through the warren of rooms and looking out the windows.  I loved the exhibit that showed the various types of clothing that people wore.   There was a mosaic of photographs of the faces of different people from different countries.  I saw a man with what looked to be blue eyes in one of the photographs.  He was dressed in eastern European clothing and reminded me of a photo I have of one of my husband's Ukrainian ancestors from back in the old country.  I also loved the exhibit that showed a collection of (for lack of a better word) junk that filled the Ellis Island facility before the renovation.

It was a long day but well worth the four hour bus ride and the security checks and screening at the ferry. Before I went I wondered if I would be disappointed. Ellis Island is someplace that I've wanted to visit for such a long time, could my high expectations possibly live up to the reality?  Well, they did live up and then some.  Ellis Island was a trip worth the wait.


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Cobh (Queensland), Ireland - Happy St. Patrick's Day

Cobh (Queensland), Ireland - Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Cobh, County Cork, Ireland

(Original Image and Text, Copyright (c) 2012 Cynthia Shenette) This post is for my Irish friends who may have immigrant ancestors who departed from the Irish seaport town of Cove (1750 to 1850), Queensland (1850 to 1922), or Cobh (1922 to date), County Cork, Ireland.  According to Wikipedia 2.5 million of the six million Irish people who departed Ireland passed through the town on their way to North America.  Cobh or Queensland as it was then called, was also the last port of call for the RMS Titanic on April 11, 1912.

In the summer of 1999 two friends and I spent three weeks traveling around Ireland.  The photo above was taken looking out the window of our bed and breakfast.  The QE2 (Queen Elizabeth 2) was in the harbor during our visit which I will admit was kind of cool.  The photograph below is of the statue of Irish immigrant Annie Moore and her brothers.  Annie was the first person to be admitted to Ellis Island when it's doors opened on January 1, 1892.

Annie Moore Statue, Cobh, County Cork, Ireland

Today is the day to lift a pint of Harp to toast the brave immigrant souls who departed Ireland in the hopes of finding a better life in America.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!


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