A Disastrous History of Housing the Poor

This tour traverses New York's rich immigrant history, from the Irish and blacks of The Five Points and the Germans across the Bowery, to the later Italian and Jewish immigrant waves that pushed the others uptown. The latest arrivals in New York were always the latest occupants of the tenement, which were built nearly non-stop from the 1860s to the 1900s throughout the Lower East Side--over the old DeLancey and Rutgers Farms! The tour describes all aspects of life, from gangs to outhouses, around tenement living and how it evolved over time. The earliest people-crammed hovels, if not wooden shanties outright, were old homes converted into multiple family dwellings. The first tenements were brick boxes with windowless interior rooms, but were a godsend under the circumstances. As they were built, ever larger, by the dozens and then the hundreds, laws raced to get light and air to interior spaces as builders raced to manufacture rentable floor space with little regard for amenities.

This tour takes us from today's Foley Square and court district (now famous for Presidential trials) through the Lower East Side. We'll pass through the vibrant local streets of Chinatown, beneath the iconic blue anchorage of the Manhattan Bridge. We pass the stunning Museum at Eldridge Street Synagogue as we walk the city streets that follow the logic of an old agrarian, farm community. We'll see Seward Park that was such a desperately needed public good opening day was standing room only. We'll pass the back of the Tenement Museum where outhouses can be seen on display, and a stop into the bookstore is an option. We famously "cross DeLancey" Street and take in a great urban eyeful of the Williamsburg Bridge. We continue to pass the distinctive array of tenements from different eras, and even an old bath house on Allen Street that operated as late as 1975! The tour ends in spectacular fashion on the rooftop of Hotel Indigo with incredible views of the tenements from above, and city itself!