IMMIGRANT NY - LAST DAY :(

     As I am waiting for my train in Valley Stream, I am a bit sad that today is our last class.  It is hot outside and I am ready for todays experience to begin.  Todays experience will take us into the past of our ancestry.  So I get to Penn Station and we head to take the F train down to Delancy Street that is located in the lower Manhattan.  In the 1800’s these grounds were the slums of New York where a number of new coming immigrants called it home.  Our first destination when we got there was the historic Essex Street Market.  This Market has a history going back to over 70 years ago.  Has ethnically diverse individual shops, “Built in 1940 to house push cart peddlers whom Mayor La Guardia legislated off the streets, the market offers food for all tastes…” (Blue Guide, 123).  The market offers a variety of foods,such as fruits, vegetables, meats and foods of different cultures (Blue Guide, 123)

Found a variety of ethnic treats here :)

The Lower Eastside is known for the most populated area in the U.S. in the 1800's due to the high volume of immigrants who would settle here first and then move forward.  In 1840 the Germans settled in this area, and in 1880 Jews settled due to the harsh amount of violence going on in their homeland the Holocaust.  Then by the 1900's there was a variety of religious people in the Lower East side it became so densely populated, making it hard to live, making it dirty, unsanitary, and the only jobs available were low paying ones, making it extremely hard to live.  The Lower Eastside was a place you came, and wanted to get out of as soon as possible. For instance, the Italians came and got out as soon as they could moving to Brooklyn, later Queens and then settling in Long Island.  You would only live in this area for a short amount of time until you were ready to move on and could support yourself and your family.  In more recent years, people for Asia and Latin America have migrated to the U.S. and specfically to this area and thus surrounding areas.  Wow just so much information in one day and the day has only begun Sheesh. 

From here we walked to our next destination.  As we walked we took a look at all the fire escapes on the buildings in the area.  Almost every building had a fire escape.  A fire escape is a special kind of emergency exit, usually mounted to the outside of a building.  It provides a method of escape in the event of a fire or other emergency that makes the stairway inaccessible.  They are mostly often found on multiple-story residential buildings, such as those we common in the Lower Eastside as well as throughout the city.  At one time, they were a very important aspect of fire safety for all new construction in urban areas, however, there fire escapes are no longer commonly constructed on a building.  A fire escape consists of a number of horizontal platforms, one at each story of a building, with ladders connecting them.  Exit from the interior of a building to the fire escape may be provided by a fire exit door, but in some cases the only exit is through a window (Fire Escape). 



As we walked and made time to visit the Tenement Museum we stopped into the Loops Gallery.  I thought they had a few things that caught my eye.

We got to our next destination where we visited the Tenament Museum, which was a little bit freaky but at he same time interesting.  This museum tells the stories of 97 Orchard Street.  Which was an apartment bulding for the poor built in the Lower Eastside in 1863, the tenement apartment building was home to nearly 7000 working class immigrants throughout the years.  This museum told us the story about how these immigrants faced challenges while making a new life, working for a better future, and starting a family with limited means.  The Tenement Museum preserves and interprets the history of immigration through the personal experiences of the generations of newcomers who settled in and built lives in the Lower East side.  The museum is literally a building that has been preserved and in some parts remodeled to show the live of an immigrant in the 1800s.  So we entered the museum by going through the back and walked up some of stairs that felt like tons.  There were holes in the walls, staining everywhere, it was a complete mess.  Later our tour guide informed us that the walls were made out of plaster and horse hair, which made me think how easy we have it now.  So they told us  the story of how people lived and how these tenaments were created and looked.  This specific building had 4 apartments per floor, which would making living on either floor very uncomfortable, loud, and cramped.  This building itself was buit in 1863 and by the time the museum opened in 1988, no one had been lviing there for 50 years. In 1935 the apartments were closed down but the ground floor was a storefront that was open for a while after.  In the 1800's the main group of people coming to the area was Germans, and a few Irish due to the Great Potatoe Famine. Later the Jewish came, followed by the Italians and once the area was gentrified the Chinese and Latin Americas moved in. The Irish, however, where the population we focused on.  The Irish came due to the great hunger the lack of food and others were sent because the British had taken over the area, and made it very difficult to live.  There landlords of their homes would literally put them on a boat and tell them to leave.  The Lower East side tripled in size in 30 years due to the influx of immigrants.  So we began our walking tour off with some history about the Irish coming to America through music.  The Irish were very much on welcomed when they came to New York.  They were known to be very loud, heavy drinkers, fighters, and just not pleasant people.  We focused on the Moore's family.  They lived in an apartment in this tenament in 1869.  We walked through the building that was redesigned to look like an apartment that resembled how they lived back in the 1800's.  This apartment consisted of only three rooms, first was the room facing the street, that had only TWO windows, then was the kitchen directly behind the front room, was really small, with a coal burning oven and a little table, following the kitchen was the bedroom directly behind it.  The bedroom was the smallest and really only fit one small size bed.  This apartment was once occupied by a family of 5.  Wow just to think that 5 people lived in this small area, the apartment looked like a studio for one or two people but no more.  The Moore's consisted of a mom, dad, and 3 little girls, one who was 3 months old and very sick baby.  The reason she was so sick was due to the milk that she had been drinking that was delivered by the "milk man."   Where ever the milk came from, the cows were sick because they would be placed close to distilleries.  They would drink bad whiskey and eat the contents around the area, and their milk would basically be poisonous.  So this poor baby received this bad milk and because of this she died a 5 months.  Was shocked to hear that they got there water with bucket or a pail.  They would have to carry water up to their floors from either a water pump in the basement or outside or from the river.  So there was no running water as we have today.   They had no ELECTRICITY.  If they were lucky enough to have an apartment with windows or have candle lanterns to give them some light.  They only had a coal burning stove to cook food and warm up there water.  They would purchase the stove and carry it up a large flight of stairs t get it into their apartments.  Aside from no running water, electricity and lighting there were no bathrooms.  It wasn't until 1898 that we started to see a change in hygene patterns, for 1898 is when a garabage pick up service was formed.  It also wasn't until 1901 that landlords were required to supply tenants with electrictiy, water and gas.  The landlords fought this as hard as they could but luckly lost and tenaments were updated.  But most importantly, milk had become pasturized.  The museum showed us the struggle our ancestors went through to survive and keep there families fed and healthy.  The history of how people lived when they first got here was really sad.   I can't even imagine how hard that must have been for them.  Really is sad how we don't appreciate how good we have it! 

Finally it was lunch time. I was starving.  We went to a Chinese food resatuarant, where we had  a few different chinese dishes to taste.  I tasted for the first time Tso chicken, was pretty good.  Had a little of everything just wasn't crazy about the boneless spare ribs, were to sweet for me.  Also disliked that we got to drink flat soda. But other then that it was a pretty good experience there. 

       

Buffet Style

We then went through the Lower Eastside where we learned more about the area and obtained some immigration history.  New York City has no official boundaries so it's hard to tell which area is which.  The Lower East side is  south of Houston, and north of Canal, it's approximately 4% of Manhattan and highly populated.  This area is considered the Slums (as I mentioned in the begining).   It has had the highest infant morality rate as well as Tuberculosis, and high crime rate.  The first to settle in the area were the Dutch, then British and this area was considered the center of the city. And as I mentioned multiple times before, the German and Irish came after.  In the 1800's this area had only about 60,000 people however by 1860 it had 600,000. 

This area has grown fast and more significant due to the immigration population and conditions.  Our tour guide told us about William M. Tweed or Boss Tweed, which was right in front of the Ludlow Street Jail.        

Our tour guide

Was Ludlow Street Jail

William M. Tweed

 Tweed was a Scottish immigrant responsible for starting volunteer fire companies, However, these fire companies were really just a cover up for an organization program Tweed was forming for the society of Tammany Hall.  It's hard to say if Tweed was a good or bad man because what he did was pretty bad but for the good of other people as well as himself.  Tweed embezzled 13 billion dollars from the city over 20 years when he was supposed to be building a court house for 250,000, in over a 2 year span.  It is said that he stole enough money to carpet central park two times over.  What he did with the money was basically use it for some good and some bad.  He is significantly known for helping out the irish, however for selfish reasons.  When the irish would arrive he would have his workers and supporters stand on the piers offering them bread and soup telling them to vote Tammany.  The irish had no idea what this meant, but the fact that they were receiving food was enough for them to vote Tammany.  Tweed would get them naturalized as soon as he could and get them to vote. He would have other Irish immigrants lie for him to have new Irish Immigrants become citizens.  He would also help the irsh find homes, jobs, and would help them support their families.  Tweed even built orphanages and hospitals for them.  He would send out turkey dinners during the holidays and made it really easy for them to settle in and not feel hated.  This was his ticket to whatever he wanted because the Irish population was so high. 

Cartoon created by Thomas Nast 

It wasn't until some people got curious about the court house and Tweed, that a newspaper article was published basically explaining the scam Tweed was pulling - it was called the Great Carpet Trick, in reference to the carpet and central park. However, the Irish were mostly illiterate, so Tweed was safe in a sense; until Thomas Nast created a cartoon depicting exactly what Tweed had done. Tweed was arrested. He was put in jail, where he had a two room chamber, was allowed visitors, had a chef, and was allowed one day out a week; sounds real rough right? On one of his days out he decided to escape, however the cartoon that was published was so popular it made its way around the world and when Tweed rolled up in Spain, Customs recognizes him and sends him right back here where he was sent back to jail and died there in 1878.  We then walked through the area that once was highly populated by push cart vendors off of Ludlow Street.  It used to be called the Pig Market, you could buy everything but PIGS there because the Jewish people did not eat pork and Jewish people were the most popular in this area.  Many people would come down to this area in the Lower Eastside and buy a variety of goods here.  The only downfall was that it was very dirty.  This would attract rats.  Stray goats, pigs and horses would sometimes eat the left over's on the ground however, that did not take care of the mess.  Horses were responisble for pulling the push carts had an average life span of 2 years. When those horses died, the owners would just leave their bodies in the street, because a burial would be way too expensive.  It wasn't until Jacob Riis took a photograph of children playing by a horse carcus that people  finally opened their eyes and realized that this place needed to be cleaned up and the creation of parks was sparked. In 1930 Mayor La Guardia moved all the push carts off the street and into market buildings, aiding in the reform of sanitation in New York City.  We then moved on and learned about the Kletzker Brotherly Aid Association, that was created by the people from the city of Kletzker.  They would get together to take care of each other.  They formed insurance plans such as burial insurance, health insurance, unemloyment and housing assistance.  They also had a place that Kletzker men and women could meet.  We moved on to the next site, which was of a building for the Jewish Daily Forward.  A Yiddish newspaper for Socialis, Unionist and Radicals. We learned a little bit more about Tenament buildings and parks.The tour guide spoke about the dumbbell design created for apartment buildings to allow for better airflow.  However the plan backfired because people would throw their garbage down the air shaft creating for a variety of hazards. The shaft also had no ground floor entry, so if something were to fall down the shaft you would have to go to the first floor, knock on your neighbors door and ask to climb into the shaft to retrieve it. It also was like an echo chamber, so anything thar was said on the first floor could be heard all the way up to the top floor of the building.  The dumbbell design lasted for only 22 years before it was discontinued as a means for extra airflow.  The tour guide then talked about Robert Moses, who I have mentioned multiple times in my prior blog posts.  He created a vast amount of parks for immigrant children and people to enjoy. On one occasion he created a park out of spite and took down multiple tenaments to do so.  Moses wanted to build a bridge wiping out Battery Park to connect to Brooklyn. However, everyone thought it was a horrible idea except for him and eventually it was turned down specifically by Mrs. Roosevelt. Moses created a park in Mrs. Roosevelt's mother-in-laws name out of spite because he was aware they did not get along.  We then went to the Bowery.  The Bowery is consider part of the Lower Eastside and was home to many poor and homeless people, who many called Onions.  There was an elevated railroad system which caused many problems such as trash and filth.  There used to be a notorious gang known as the Bowery Boys, who did not help the neighborhood succeed in any positive way.  

Dragon Fruit in China Town

Now this area is home to many Chinese immigrants who came here in big numbers during and mostly after the Gold Rush in California in 1849.  Now the area is specifically home to the Chinese and is known as China Town.  Little Italy is also in the area which was once home to Italians but has now been taken over by Chinese people.  

                                                                                 

This tour came to an end in Little Italy.  We finished the day off on Canal Street, where everyone disappeared where Liz and I were left alone.  We finished the day off with some shopping and met up with my husband, daughter and spent a beautiful evening in Times Square.  I was sad that it was the last class.  This class was a great experience and am very thankful to have had this wonderful experience and I guess we owe all to our two great professor's Professor Hey and Russo.  Thanks again!!!