The Lower East Side and New York's immigrant story: tenements, delis and the Tenement Museum

What was a tenement?

In 19th-century New York, a tenement was a multi-family rental building, usually five or six stories tall, built on a narrow city lot about 25 feet wide. Landlords packed in as many apartments as they could. A typical family lived in three small rooms totaling a few hundred square feet, and often took in boarders or did piecework sewing at the kitchen table to make the rent. In many buildings, only the front room had a window to the street, while the interior rooms had little light or fresh air. Toilets were privies in the backyard, shared by everyone.

Reformers fought for change. Photographer and journalist Jacob Riis shocked middle-class readers in 1890 with How the Other Half Lives, documenting conditions in the city's slums. A series of housing laws, in 1867, 1879 and especially 1901, gradually brought in fire escapes, air shafts, windows in every room and, eventually, indoor toilets. Walk down almost any Lower East Side block and you'll see the results: fire escapes zigzagging down brick facades, a feature so familiar now that it's easy to forget they were once a hard-won safety measure.

Synagogues, settlements and newspapers

By the early 20th century, the Lower East Side was home to hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, and dozens of synagogues, large and small, filled its streets. The grandest survivor is the Eldridge Street Synagogue, completed in 1887 as one of the first great synagogues in the country built by Eastern European Jews. As its congregation moved away, the main sanctuary fell into disrepair for decades, until a long restoration brought it back to life. Its east window, designed by artist Kiki Smith, glows with golden stars. The building now houses the Museum at Eldridge Street, and it's still an active synagogue.

On East Broadway, the tall building that once housed the Jewish Daily Forward, the Yiddish newspaper that was essential reading for immigrants, still stands. And on Henry Street, the Henry Street Settlement, founded by nurse Lillian Wald in 1893, pioneered public health nursing and social services for the neighborhood. It's still serving the community today.

A neighborhood of many layers

The Lower East Side has never belonged to one group. Italian immigrants settled just to the west, around Mulberry Street, and Chinatown grew south and east. After World War II, Puerto Rican New Yorkers made the area around Avenues A through D their own and gave it a new name, Loísaida. Dominican, Chinese and other communities followed. Every layer left something behind.