When you walk into the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, you walk into the lives of immigrants who lived more than 100 years ago, but who confronted many of the same issues immigrants face today. The tour leads you through 97 Orchard Street (one of the first tenements built on the Lower East Side, dating from 1863) and through the reconstructed apartments of some of its inhabitants. The building was built by Lukas Glockner and served as a home to 7,000 immigrants from 20 different countries during its 71 years of habitation. It fell into disrepair after stricter building codes forced its closing in 1935, but the museum has since preserved and restored it.

The restoration included returning four apartments to the way they appeared when families lived there from the 1860s through the 1930s. Three different tours lead you through the lives of the families that once called this tenement home.

The "Getting By" tour first brings you to the home of the Gumpertz family, where Natalie Gumpertz raised her three daughters by taking up sewing after her husband disappeared. The tour then goes next door to the home of the Baldizzis, who arrived in 1928 but were forced to move out when the building closed in 1935. Their apartment was reconstructed largely according to the memories shared by a woman who grew up there. The family moved to America in hopes of finding wealth, only to be confronted by the Great Depression. Nevertheless, the memories of Josephine Baldizzi, which you can hear via CD player, are happy ones.

The experiences of these two immigrant families will teach you about the support networks available to them during hard times set the backdrop for a discussion of the development of social welfare in the United States and how the social welfare available to these two families differs from what is available to American families today.

Another tour, entitled “Piecing it Together,” features the home of the Levines and the Rogarshevskys. Learn about the apartment that doubled as a garment shop run by Polish immigrants Jennie and Harris Levine, where their son, Max was born in 1897. Also, visit the Rogarshevsky apartment, which is restored to reflect the period when the family sat Shiva (mourning) for the death of Abraham Rogarshevsky, a presser in the garment industry, who died of tuberculosis in 1918.. Finally you will have the opportunity to hear about other immigrants from the 1930s to the present who also worked in the garment industry, and compare their experiences to those of the Levines and the Rogarshevskys.

The third tour features the Confinos, a middle-class family who fled Kastoria (formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, now part of Greece) in 1912. Keep in mind that these people hoped to find a better life in America but ended up in a tiny, rat-infested apartment that they shared with their six children. Victoria Confino (played by a costumed interpreter) will welcome you and teach you how to adapt to life in America. In a hands-on experience you can examine items in the apartment – even try on clothes and learn the fox trot.

This is an excellent place to visit if you are studying any of a wide range of topics related to the period when this building was occupied. Make sure to come here if you are researching immigration, housing or safety laws, New York City history, and/or the Great Depression. A number of artifacts may be of interest. For example, in the Rogarshevsky apartment there are several old medicinal tools and substances used to treat Mr. Rogarshevsky’s tuberculosis.

Although the museum is rather small, it has expanded its programming and educational resources. For a full listing of these resources as well as information on how to participate in a tour, or if you can’t make it in person, view a virtual tour, visit the museum’s website [www.tenement.org]. You should be aware that although the museum is small, it does receive many visitors (over120,000 last year alone), so tours fill up quickly. As tours are limited in size and sell out quickly, you should plan this visit ahead of time. Also, from April through December, the museum offers a guided tour of the neighborhood in which the museum is located.