A new program at the Tenement Museum

“What have you always wanted to know about your ancestors?” educator Adam Steinberg asked his tour group, at the Tenement Museum on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It prides itself on being a fun, lively, interactive experience, while other museums host stuffy show-and-tells. It has educators, not tour guides. And now its new program, “Getting By: Past and Present”, combines tour and a roundtable discussion where everyone’s history is involved.

A recent “Getting By” started at the museum’s red-bricked building at 97 Orchard St. Visitors introduced themselves as being from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and London. Some had ancestors from Russia and Poland: Ashkenazi Jews who all immigrated to America. First the group talked about what life must have been like for great-grandparents. Then, everyone went off to the preserved apartments of the museum.

The 150-year-old tenement building showcases snapshots of immigrant life in apartments from two different time periods – 1870, with German Jewish residents, and 1930 with Italian Catholics. During the walk-through, Steinberg continually posed questions to the group.

“The Baldizzis were illegal, but received welfare from the city,” he said. “Do you think they should have received government help? What about immigrants in the same situation today?”

Lokki Chan, the museum’s Education Associate for Program Coordination, and a manager of “Getting By,” talked about the program’s relevance today.

“According to the 2006 American Community Survey, immigrants and their children now account for more than 60 percent of New York City’s population, the highest portion of the city’s population comprised by immigrants since 1901,” she said. “The need for building understanding among people of vastly different backgrounds is more urgent than ever.”

Engaging the group has always been a staple of the Tenement Museum. But on Oct. 29, it started the two-hour long, daily program “Getting By” as a revamping of its “Kitchen Conversations”, an optional visitor and educator discussion post-tour.

Now, “Getting By” offers in-depth discussion throughout the tour, and a mandatory roundtable discussion with the same educator afterward.

When “Kitchen Conversations” was receiving mixed feedback, the museum introduced “Getting By” to facilitate an easier transition from tour to talking. “After the tour, people would become uncomfortable and leave rather than stay and talk,” said Steinberg. “Now, with open-ended discussions integrated into the tour, feedback is excellent.”

“It was more like taking a short course than a museum tour, “ said David Solomons, a visitor from Sunday’s group who had Jewish ancestors living in London’s West End.

After the tour of the apartments, the group returned to the front room and sat around a table for oolong tea, cookies, and a post-visit chat.

“I got to speculate what my ancestors experienced coming from Europe, and what they had to deal with,” said Peter Swanson, a graduate student from Oregon.

“Learning with experience seems the most effective way, and this tour was experiential,” Solomons said. “It was very fulfilling and enjoyable.”

The little post office that could

At the beginning of October, I wrote an article for my The Beat: Reporting Downtown class at NYU about a tiny post office on the Lower East Side that was on the United States Postal Service's list for closure.

Because of massive losses (due in large part to the internet!) the USPS is trying to scale back its services. The Pitt Street Post Office is special because it sits in a NORC (Naturally Occurring Retirement Community - with at least 50 percent of residents 60 and over) on Clinton Street, and the elderly is the one of the biggest snail mail demographics.

My teacher, who has connections at the Daily News, submitted my article and it was published on Nov. 18.

Daily News article from Nov. 18

Then Gothamist, a prominent NYC blog, picked it up:

Gothamist's Extra Extra

I was already excited about the attention the story was getting, until Nov. 20, when the USPS announced they were reducing the list of closing P.O.s in NYC from 14 to five.

Gothamist: Post Office Death Count Down to 5

The Pitt Street Post Office is staying open!

The decision of the USPS was due in part to community activism (and there has been a lot around Clinton Street) but I was so happy that my article may have had influence, no matter how little or how much.

Veggies - A-hoy to the East River docks!

Since becoming a vegetarian almost a year ago, I've been on a constant mission to find a great veggie-friendly restaurant on the Lower East Side, but the neighborhood is surprisingly empty of one.

I've found plenty in the East Village where I live - Curly's Vegetarian Lunch at 14th Street and 1st Avenue (my personal favorite - try the crabfakes and "chorizo"!), Caravan of Dreams at 6th Street and 1st Avenue, Kate's Joint at 4th Street and Avenue B, and Lula's Sweet Apothecary at 6th Street and Avenue A (vegan ice cream that everyone has to try to believe).

BabyCakes, on Broome Street on the LES, is a great vegan bakery that tempts me every time I'm walking in the neighborhood. But aside from that, below Houston Street restaurants that aren't steak and fish-heavy seem hard to find. In such a thriving, modern, and youth-centered neighborhood, it's odd that the restaurants aren't following the nationwide trend of young people taking vegetables and tofu over meat. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough...






LES, you need more of this goodness! Delicious burrito property of Curly's Vegetarian Lunch.

Guss' Pickles - Why are they moving to Brooklyn?

It seems like Guss' Pickles will be out of the Lower East Side around the end of the year. It will be the end of a 99-year tradition, and another LES mainstay to join the list of mom-and-pop shops that can't pay the new, ridiculously high rent of the neighborhood.

The LES used to be the place for pickles. Guss' dates back to the 1900s, when a Polish immigrant named Isidor Guss opened up a stand. There were vendors all over the place. But with Guss' up and moving to Brooklyn, one of the traditions of Jewish immigrant life is that much closer to disappearing.

Apparently the rent has become too high for Pat Fairhurst, the owner, and the space just isn't big enough for her to brine the way she wants. The other day when I was down there I bought two pickles: a three-quarter sour, and a spicy pickle. Other varieties are half-sour and full-sour. They were both delicious, even though the spicy pickle was so hot my ears started burning. It was a wonderful taste experience.

The gentrification of the Lower East Side has brought along many wonderful eateries, including Il Laboratorio del Gelato, a homemade ice cream stand on Orchard Street, and the Roasting Plant, also on Orchard, a cafe that roasts its coffee beans freshly every day. But what about the shops of immigrant life that have survived the years? There are still a few knisherys and delis scattered throughout the neighborhood, but it seems like the loss of Guss' is just the continuation of an old-world exodus.



Probably the spiciest pickle in New York - maybe on earth.

A free podcast tour of Lower East Side

I'm always a little iffy about walking tours with guides - it can be hard to hear them, to catch up with them, and taking the tour at a leisurely pace is next to impossible. So finding a free podcast tour of the Lower East Side, that I could download onto my iPod, might have been less personal, but it was definitely more satisfying.

Although the Lower East Side runs east from Bowery all the way to the Williamsburg Bridge, it starts for some at the Eldridge Street Synagogue, fitting for the neighborhood’s rich Jewish immigrant history. Imposing and beautiful, Eldridge’s Star of David engravings contrast sharply with Chinese bakeries across the street. It’s what the Lower East Side, nicknamed the “gateway to America”, embodies: a mélange of cultures just a few sidewalk steps apart. This is what the tour provided by the Lower East Side Business Improvement District emphasizes. Different cultures, time periods, and creeds are all explored with equal depth and clarity on this fascinating walking tour.

From Eldridge, the tour takes a right on Canal and crosses Allen, an eight-lane street that used to have an extra row of tenements - cheaply made housing for immigrants - through the middle. It turns left on Orchard Street and goes north. A street wealthy with the new and old, Orchard houses almost everything the LES has to offer, starting with surviving tenement buildings.

During the late 19th century, this area used to be the world’s most populated: there were 240,000 people per square mile. Now, Orchard is quiet in many parts, peaceful. The street is closed on weekends for pedestrian traffic, and storeowners lug their wares outdoors. This is the Bargain District, where garment sweatshops used to rule; now fancy boutiques stand next to mom-and-pop shops.

Further up, the tour suggests a spicy pickle at Guss’ on the corner of Orchard and Broome. And the few Jewish delis that remain require a visit, with the menu at Katz’s still partially in Yiddish. When the tour gets to Houston, the LES has officially ended, but one can still find fresh knishes at Yonah Schimmel’s a few blocks west.



The Eldridge Street Synagogue