Accessibility at the Museum

The Tenement Museum welcomes all visitors. We recognize the diverse needs of our audience and offer accessible programs and services to enable all visitors to explore the stories we interpret at the Tenement Museum.

For questions about Museum accessibility and how we can accommodate your specific needs, call 877-975-3786 or e-mail [email protected].

Membership | The Tenement Museum offers a special $65 membership for visitors with disabilities. For a discounted membership, please call our membership line 646-518-3007.

Free entry to care partners | Regardless of Museum membership status, all visitors with disabilities can obtain free entry for their care partners. Please call 877-975-3786 or email [email protected] to request free entry for a care partner.

Service Animal Policy | Service dogs are welcome on all museum tours. However, pets and emotional support animals are not allowed inside our tenement buildings, but can be brought on outdoor neighborhood walking tours.

Accessibility and COVID-19

Mask Policy

Visitors will be required to wear face coverings while taking an indoor building tour and visiting our Museum Shop, but they are optional on our walking tours. If a visitor has scheduled an indoor building tour but is unable to wear a mask, face covering, or face shield due to a disability, they will be given the following options as reasonable accommodations as alternatives to taking an in-person tour:

  • Take an available scheduled walking tour
  • Take a scheduled virtual program in the future
  • Schedule a private virtual tour for a future date

For more information, please visit our COVID-19 Health and Safety Measures page.

Recommended Tours

Tours and guided experiences are the only ways to access our historic buildings. These often include small spaces. If you have difficulties in small spaces, please call 877-975-3786 or e-mail [email protected] for recommendations.

Wheelchair Accessible Tours

Tenement Apartment Tours

100 Years Apart

Explore how immigrant women coped with economic hardship through the stories of Natalie Gumpertz and Mrs. Wong. Hear how these two women, living a century apart, shared similar struggles, hopes, and survival strategies as they made new lives.

Read More

Tenement Apartment Tours

Finding Home

Step inside the tenement homes of the Epstein and Saez Velez families in the 1950s and 1960s. Explore what life was like for Jewish Holocaust survivors and Puerto Rican migrants in a NYC neighborhood becoming more racially and culturally diverse.

Read More

Neighborhood Walking Tours

Reclaiming Black Spaces

From the story of Sebastiaen de Britto, one of the first Black residents of the area in the 1640s, to Studio We, a musician’s collective in the 1970s, we’ll look through windows into the past that expand the history of today’s Lower East Side.

Read More
The Grand Street Guild and Saint Marys Church

Neighborhood Walking Tours

Building on the Lower East Side

Explore how architects, activists, civic agents, and everyday people have influenced the very landscape of the neighborhood and uncover the stories of the Lower East Side. Learn about early pre-tenement homes and the modernist urban renewal of the 1950s.

Read More
Historic photo of the Forward Building on the Lower East Side

Neighborhood Walking Tours

Outside the Home

Discover how Lower East Siders shaped and were shaped by their neighborhood over the 19th and early 20th Centuries. From stores to parks, movie theaters to schools, discover how these spaces became important cultural centers.

Read More

wheelchair symbol Wheelchair Accessibility

The Museum has a limited amount of wheelchairs available to borrow for wheelchair-accessible programs. To reserve a wheelchair for your visit, please call our Call Center at 1-877-975-3786 (Monday–Saturday: 10am – 4pm) or email [email protected] at least 24 hours in advance. Only tours with “Individual Using a Wheelchair” tickets are fully wheelchair-accessible.

  • Important to Note
    • All visitors with disabilities can obtain free entry for their care partners. Please call or email us for requests.
    • Depending on the size, motorized scooters may not be able to visit on tours inside our buildings. Please call or email us for assistance.

Individuals who are Blind or have Low Vision

  • Handling objects are available for our 100 Years Apart, Finding Home, and Day in the Life tours. Ask for these materials when you arrive at the Visitors Center.
  • Visitors can book a free tactile orientation to the Museum before their tour with two weeks’ advance notice. Call or email us to schedule.

Individuals who are Deaf or have Hearing Loss

Assistive Listening Devices
The Museum offers FM assistive listening devices upon request for all tours and evening programming. Ask a representative at the Visitors Center upon arrival.

Induction Loops
Portions of the Finding Home and 100 Years Apart tours include audio-visual elements equipped with induction loops.

Promotional photo of an actress playing Victoria Confino. Smiling, she wears a headband and blue checkered apron as she hangs clothes on a line hanging in the kitchen of the Confino apartment

Virtual Experiences

The Tenement Museum offers a slate of digital programs – including virtual tours, panels, and discussions. You can learn more about these on our Upcoming Events page.

We are committed to increasing the accessibility of these virtual programs. Accommodations are available for all of our virtual programs. To request accessibility accommodations, please email us at [email protected] with a minimum of 2 weeks’ notice.

We are also hosting a small number of accessibility focused programs. For more information and to be placed on our invite list for these programs, please contact us at [email protected].

Getting to the Museum

wheelchair symbol   Wheelchair Accessibility

The Delancey-Essex F/J/M/Z station has no elevator. The uptown F platform has an escalator to exit to the street. The nearest wheelchair accessible subway station is B/D/F/M/6 to Broadway-Lafayette Street.

At the Museum

 toilet symbol   Restrooms

The Visitors Center is equipped with universally designed elevators and elevator-accessible restrooms on the basement level.