The Museum's exhibitions and programming are rooted in research. The Museum uses 97 Orchard Street as a lens to examine the history of tenement life and the immigrant experience on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

The Museum's curator has enlisted volunteers and professional genealogists to research the building's former residents, shopkeepers, and owners. To date, they have identified almost 1,300 individuals who owned, lived, or worked in 97 Orchard Street. Architectural historians and conservators have investigated how the building's structure and fabric changed over time. For example, paint samples have helped the Museum identify the color of the walls and ceilings, as well as when various parts of the structure were altered.

The Museum researches every aspect of an individual family that lived at 97 Orchard Street, down to minute details such as the color of the bedroom ceiling and the addresses of where members of the family worked, in order to create exhibitions that fully recreate the family's apartment. This attention to detail allows visitors to fully understand these families not merely as members of particular ethnicities or members of a certain class, but as individual people who have a multitude of identities.

Research into the history of 97 Orchard Street has often raised issues and themes that have contemporary implications, which the Museum has sought to explore more comprehensively. For example, census records indicated that in 1900 and 1905, a significant number of the building's residents were involved in the garment industry. Since the garment industry continues to draw newcomers into its ranks today, the Museum decided to explore how the experiences of contemporary immigrants differ or conform to those of immigrants one hundred years ago.

Faced with an inadequate research base on the subject, Museum-supported scholars completed four case studies that looked at the role of the garment industry in the immigration experiences of four different ethnicities: Jews and Italians at the turn of the last century and Chinese and Spanish speakers in the late 20th century. This research has provided the basis for restoring the apartment of Harris and Jenny Levine, who operated a contractor's shop in their apartment in the 1890s.

The Tenement Museum shares its research through book publications. In 1998, New York University Press published the Museum's Six Heritage Tours of the Lower East Side: A Walking Guide, based on research conducted by Museum scholars about the 19th century Lower East Side community building efforts of African, Irish, Italian, Chinese, and Eastern European Jewish immigrants.

In 1999, the Museum published the award-winning A Tenement Story, a 48-page book on the museum's history, the neighborhood, and the tenants of 97 Orchard Street.

The Museum also disseminates its research through a publication entitled Tenement Times. Each issue serves as a "gallery guide" providing context for a one of the permanent exhibitions in the tenement at 97 Orchard Street. In conjunction with the "Sitting Shiva with the Rogarshevskys" exhibit, a Tenement Times explored such topics as the genealogical research on the Rogarshevsky family, differences between Italian Catholic and Eastern European Jewish mourning customs, and the history of immigrant mutual aid associations. Another issue of Tenement Times issue focused on the experience of different ethnicities in the garment industry over time.

Other books and publications that focus on the tenement at 97 Orchard Street include:

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum has researched 97 Orchard Street extensively, but its collections contain relatively little information about the history of other tenements and buildings in the neighborhood. For researchers interested in learning the history of other buildings in New York City, the Tenement Museum suggests following the steps outlined by Christopher Gray in an article for the New York Times.

The Museum has also conducted research as part of its Lower East Side Community Preservation Project (LESCPP). To help achieve its mission, the Tenement Museum endeavors to collaborate with other community organizations. A coalition of Lower East Side community organizations, the LESCPP uses the power of community history and historic places to instill a sense of pride in our neighborhood and provide a common ground for addressing local issues.

The St. Augustine's Episcopal Church proposed the preservation of its 1828 "slave gallery," two box-like rooms above the church's balcony in which African-Amercian parishioners were assigned, as the project's first initiative. The Museum has worked with this mainly African-American congregation to conduct research on the architectural and social history of the gallery and begin planning for its restoration and preservation. Starting with the restoration and interpretation of this gallery, the Church hopes to establish an African-American historic site on the Lower East Side.