Day 8: Lower East Side

Our last day in the company of Ed O’Donnell was spent studying an historically significant aspect of New York that most tourists (and remember, I AM the tourist of the year) would never come to see—the Lower East Side, which was the home of poor immigrants for decades.   To the casual tourist with a passing interest in history, tours of Ellis Island are probably about as far as it goes in talking about immigration.  I thought Ed made a salient point today that as important as Ellis Island is to the story of immigration, for immigrants themselves the time they spent there was but a fleeting moment compared to their experiences once they settled down.  For the vast majority of those people, the Lower East Side was their home. Therefore, to truly understand the hard lives that these people lived and the role that they played in building New York, one must come to this sliver of the city.  Amidst the wealthiest city in the world, this was where Jacob Riis came to document How the Other Half Lives.

We began right away at perhaps the most infamous spot in the New York slums in the nineteenth century—Five Points. The film Gangs of New York was set in this area. Here again we see the way New York has re-made itself over the years, as Foley Square looks nothing like it did during the period, as massive modern buildings have been built on top of the former neighborhood, park built in the heart of Foley Square, and the streets re-designed (in fact, only Mulberry Street still has the same name).  In the nineteenth century, the area was a working-class neighborhood of mainly Irish immigrants, although some Italians, blacks, Jews, and other groups also lived there.  It was renowned as a crime-ridden area by people at the time, and visitors to New York feared being anywhere near it (though much of the problems were sensationalized, as Ed pointed out).  The abject poverty, cramped living conditions, tight streets, saloons, prostitution, and violence were noted by many including Charles Dickens in 1842:

          “This is the place: these narrow ways diverging to the right and left, and reeking every where with dirt and filth. Such lives as led here, bear the same fruit here as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors have counterparts at home and all the wide world over. Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays. Many of these pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright in lieu of going on all-fours? and why they talk instead of grunting?”

Five Points in 19th Century

Five Points Today from a similar perspectiveAn Irishman in Five Points

Elbow of Mulberry Street

The diversity of poor people who lived in the Lower East Side is staggering, as is how those groups changed through the years.  From Irish neighborhoods that later became Italian, German areas that became Jewish, blacks, and later Latinos and Asians, the transformations have been on-going.  We saw several places of worship that Ed pointed out have belonged to different denominations at different points in time.  Today, this area is largely Asian.

I found it fascinating that the Jewish cemetery dating back to the mid-seventeenth century is still cared for and kept neat—not by Jews but by the neighboring Catholic church.

Diversity from the beginning in Manhattan

For lunch, we dined at Katz’s Deli.  Upon entering you get a little yellow ticket and the guard informs you that you MUST have it it to get out.  You then approach the large counter and get in line to order your sandwich and try samples of their superb meat.  I chose the Reuben Combo, complete with corned beef and pastrami.   It was excellent!

Where Harry Met Sally

Reuben Combo

Support the Troops

 This is a two-week trip, so after some careful reflection, I’ll have what she’s having…(Katz’s encourages it by the way)

 

After lunch we visited the Tenement Museum, where we saw one of the first tenements put up in New York in 1863.  The building had five floors, each with four apartments.  The apartments had three rooms, a bedroom, kitchen, and living room and were about 325 square feet.  Here, poor immigrant families, averaging between 8 and 13 family members made their homes and did their best to survive in their new country.  From records, the museum knows that more than seven thousand people lived here from 1863 until it was closed down in 1935.  Prior to indoor plumbing, outhouses were in the small common courtyard on the bottom level. 

Some families further crowded their homes to do garment work in their homes.  Pressers, seamstresses, and sewing machine operators were hired to sew garments as part of the huge garment industry on the Lower East Side.  Thus, these apartments served as factories as well as homes.  Jacob Riis documented the squalor and unhealthy living conditions to push for reforms. 

I noticed Jonathan posted links to the museum and information that we can use for our curricula.  That is great because we could not take pictures, and I think it is hard for kids to understand just how small these apartments were.

I teach about this every year, but having seen the streets and the tenements themselves gives me added impetus to spend more time and put more emphasis on it in my teaching (that is when testing, assemblies, last-minute schedule changes, conferences, professional developments, and other interruptions don’t get in the way).

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