Blog | Tenement Museum

The Great Escapist: A Story of an Immigrant and a Showman

America has long been known as the land of opportunity. The country welcomed people...

Five Stories and Counting: The History of 97 Orchard Street in Five Terms

You may ask yourself, okay – what is a Tenement anyway? So we’ve defined the...

SURRENDER : Movie Theatres in the Lower East Side

I was 13 years old and I remember stopping at the old Kossar’s on Grand Street, buying...

The Legacy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

With the boom of the ready-to-wear garment industry, American artist Charles Dana Gibson...

All the Right Notes: A History of Hazel Scott

In honor of Black History Month, we are paying tribute to Hazel Scott, one of the most...

Shop Around the Corner: A Tale of Rising Commercial Rents

One marker of New York’s changing neighborhood is the closure of the East Village haunt,...

Love At The Tenement

We found love at 97 Orchard. Well, we found a love letter. “Nobody can keep us apart,”...

The Once and Future Penn Station: Part II

You may have seen the pictures of Penn Station before it went down. In fact, rushing...

A Monument to Impermanence: The Death and Life of New York’s Penn Station

It was lavish, grand, spectacular. It was marble and granite built in the classical...

As Time Goes By: 1935 on the Lower East Side

In many ways, the year 1935 was the end of an era for a tenement building at 97 Orchard...

The Rent Is Due: A History of Rent at 97 Orchard Street

Visitors to the Tenement Museum often ask about rent. How much did the Moores pay...

Looking back at THE COMMITMENTS: 25 Years Later with author/co-screenwriter Roddy Doyle

Last year the prominent Irish author Roddy Doyle wrote a beautiful essay for Intelligent...

A Tenement Story
Print and e-Book
A visually compelling experience, A Tenement Story is the culmination of over 30 years of dedicated stewardship of two tenement buildings on Orchard Street through vivid photographs of the last two centuries.

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Your Story, Our Story
A Digital Collection
Your Story, Our Story features objects that tell personal stories of American immigration and migration. The Tenement Museum invites people across the country to share these mementos and stories in our online digital storytelling exhibit.

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Notes from the Tenement