Museums: The Tenement Museum (Part 2 of 2)

Welcome back to the Lower East Side for the second part of our visit to the Tenement Museum.

Part 2--Building on the Lower East Side:

A second Tenement Museum tour took us walking around much of the Lower East Side, viewing buildings from different time periods stretching back 200 years.  Our guide was friendly and fact-filled, telling us the essentials and answering varied questions.

Along the way, we viewed buildings from different time periods stretching back nearly 200 years.  Our guide posed thought-provoking questions about the various buildings we viewed--"Is this building worth saving?  What makes it landmark worthy?"  Other interesting questions concerned affordable housing in the area--"should more be added?"--and what should become of the Lower East Side?  

Our Tenement Museum guide, with annual household income requirements for different types of affordable housing 

The tour started with viewing a now-landmarked building, a single family home built in 1832 (pictured below).  Earlier in time, the area was farmland.  Following the Revolutionary War, land owned by English loyalists was taken and the land north of the occupied area of Manhattan was developed as the population grew and expanded northward.  One gent by the name of John Jacob Astor smelled opportunity and invested a piece of his fur trading fortune into real estate development, including the house pictured below.  Astor acquired and developed large tracts, including the farmland that would become Times Square.

The house pictured below was typical of the area.  Each house would be home to 1, 2 or 3 families.  Hundreds of similar houses were built in the area. 

 

Federal row house, built 1832, at the intersection of Grand and Ludlow Streets (southwest corner)

By the middle of the of the 1800's, immigration from Europe (Germany, Ireland, etc.) to New York City greatly increased.  The resulting demand for housing was great.  So, landowners responded by constructing much larger buildings that could house not just 3-4 families, but 20 or more families.  As a result, hundreds and hundreds of tenements were constructed in the Lower East Side and occupied for the next 75 to 100 years by successive waves of immigrants.

A row of tenements along Broome Street in the Lower East Side

In addition to tenements built in the 1800's, the tour included other types of buildings built in the 1800's.  Two are pictured below.

Formerly home to a burial society for Polish Jews--membership ensured an observant burial (built in ___)

The Angel Oresanz Foundation Center for the Arts, 172 Norfolk Street in the Lower East Side--a synagogue built in 1849 and the oldest surviving synagogue building in NYC.   The building now operates as an art space, event venue and temple for monthly religious services.  (Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick were married here in 1997).

In 1924, the U.S. greatly restricted immigration from those regions sending the most immigrants to the United States.  As a consequence, the once densely packed Lower East Side started a gradual downward slide in occupancy as earlier immigrants moved out, onward and upward.  Buildings emptied and decayed.

In the years following World War II, new affordable and safe housing was needed.  So, slum clearance came to the Lower East Side.  Over time, hundreds of tenements were destroyed to make way for new housing.  Among the new buildings were towers with free and subsidized public housing, along with private housing.  One example is the private cooperative known as Seward Park (pictured below), a collection of more than 1,700 apartments in four high-rise buildings completed in 1959. 

Seward Park:  Affordable housing in the 1960's-2000's.  With removal of the limitation on resale profit, the units are now market rate, which means purchase prices are about $1,000 per square foot.

Photo of a modern row house in the Lower East Side, restricted to existing residents of lower Manhattan

Blue Condominium, 105 Norfolk Street, in the Lower East Side, completed in 2007.  Prices are about $1,600 per square foot.  $3.5M will get you a 3-bedroom unit on an upper floor.  Don't worry about Fido or Fifi--pets are allowed.