Designated a National Historic Area, the five-story tenement building has stood at 97 Orchard St. on Manhattan’s Lower East Side since the first wave of immigrants streamed into New York in 1863. Yes, Lower East Side has been an immigrant portal for over a hundred years. Some 7,000 people from more than 20 countries made their home here, in a five-story tenement building between 1863 and 1935. If the walls and halls of these tenement houses could speak, they’d tell many a story of how some of New York’s earliest immigrants, coming from many different places and races, lived and worked (actually, they worked where they lived, but that’s getting ahead of our story). They have tales to tell not only of the lives of these settlers but also of their loves and dreams. How they dreamed the American dream and paid dearly for it. There was the Gumpertz family of German-Jewish descent, who fled their own home and sought refuge in the land of the brave and the home of the free. One day in 1874, Julius Gumpertz went to work, leaving his wife Nathalie behind to take care of their apartment at 97 Orchard St. Julius never came back and was never seen or heard from again. With no means to support herself and her three daughters, Nathalie transformed her apartment into a garment shop. Sewing dresses for the other German women in the neighborhood, Nathalie was able to make ends meet. Nathalie’s fate took a different turn when she suddenly received a $600 inheritance left to her missing husband. She used the money to improve her shop and eventually transferred to a German neighborhood in a place which would later become Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Note that by the 1890s, there was a string of at least 23 garment shops operating from tenement apartments. They stretched from Delancey to Broome Streets on the Lower East Side. Today, on this very same block, you’ll see a recreation of one such garment shop at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.
These days, the Lower East Side is bursting at the seams with garment factories – some 500 of them, 80 percent of which are owned by Chinese immigrants.
Then there were Eastern European Jews Abram and Zipe Heller who gave up not only their home in Lithuania but also their names when they came to America in 1901. Abram and Zipe Heller became Abraham and Fannie Rogarshevsky. To support his six children, Abraham worked as a presser in a garment shop. However, his job took a toll on his health; Abraham contracted a disease and died in 1918. With her husband, the sole breadwinner of the family, gone, Fannie was at a loss. Luckily, she found her bearings with the help of the building’s landlords who hired her to be the janitress of 97 Orchard Street.
There were also the Confinos, who had a comfortable life in the Ottoman city of Kastoria but fled and emigrated to New York City. Their apartment on Orchard Street was too cramped to fit in all 10 members of the family. But space was probably the least of the Confinos’ problems. Having to adapt to a new place, new culture and a whole new world, the Confinos found themselves at odds with the other immigrants who lived in the tenement building, most of them Eastern European Jews. Overcoming the odds, however, the youngest of the Confino children, Victoria, went to school for the first time – but only for a while because her father put her to work in a garment factory.
Early this year, the museum added to its permanent exhibition the Levine apartment, home of a Jewish immigrant family from Plonsk, Poland, who crammed their four children, several workers (who shared sleeping quarters and a toilet in the hallway) and a dressmaking shop into a 325-square-foot space. The Levine apartment has been restored to just the way it looked back in November 1897 when its residents, Harris and Jennie Levine, were about to give birth to their third child Max. A crib, with fabric draped over it, stands in the kitchen, anxiously awaiting its little occupant. And what’s a doll doing in a tub next to a crumpled bed? Well, it serves as another makeshift crib. Sitting by the window is a foot-powered sewing machine where mommy works when she’s not babysitting or taking care of the house.
The living room-cum-garment shop is filled with yards of pink silk. A wooden mannequin dons a beautiful dress with amazing lace and embroidery.
In this tiny apartment, the Levines lived and worked for a decade until they moved to Brooklyn to seek a better life.
"We tried to make it look like there was a family living here – a workspace and a home," says curator Steven Long.
Museum officials hope to draw attention to the important role the garment industry played in the lives of the immigrants at the turn of both the 20th and 21st centuries.
We glory in the past as our guide takes us for a house tour around this museum that faithfully brings to life the way the immigrants, from 1863 to 1935, were. In the semi-darkness (which was how it must have looked more than a hundred years ago), we climb a flight of narrow, weather-beaten stairs. Our guide tells us that some three or four families shared this cramped apartment with a common toilet in the dark hallway (imagine groping your way to the john in the dead of night). We see a living room that doubles as a bedroom, a bedroom that’s smaller than the toilet in a Forbes Park home, and a dining room that also serves as a kitchen. Without any provision for a heater or a fire place, it must have been freezing cold in the harsh winter months. Devoid of proper ventilation, how scorching hot it must have been when the temperature sizzled in the summertime.
Even in the nippy, Christmasy air, New York sizzles. We zero in on Ground Zero with our French guide Francoise MacEntyre. It’s become a tourist attraction of sorts, drawing visitors from all parts of the globe. "After the 9/11 tragedy, for a time I did not have any job, there were no tourists," says Francoise, showing us her little appointment book. "But it picked up this year."
Things are looking good for New Yorkers. We look up and see this giant billboard with these words: "The human spirit is not measured by the size of the act but by the size of the heart."
Amid the harsh realities of their rat-racy world, post-9/11 New Yorkers are now stopping to listen to their hearts, to smell the flowers, to savor the moment.
Also teeming with tourists is St. Paul’s Chapel, which pays tribute to the 9/11 volunteers and rescue workers, those brave men and women who unselfishly gave of themselves, their time and even their own lives. From the exhibit, we learn that volunteer restaurants around New York provided breakfast, lunch and dinner for the rescue workers day and night. Breakfast usually consisted of cheese grits, garlic eggs, and chili eggs. There were burgers galore and Spanish, Mexican, Thai food, too. Of course, there was the all-time favorite meatloaf. Aside from lots of filling food, the rescue workers got some aromatherapy massage pampering from the volunteers.
So you think it’s expensive to tour New York? Well, have you heard of "New York City on a shoestring: Fun for $10 and under"? Fact is, in New York, some of the best things in life are free. Like, among other things:
• A free guided tour by a Big Apple Greeter from local volunteers who will happily share the secrets of their favorite neighborhoods at no charge. Make an appointment three to four weeks in advance (212/669-8159, www.bigapplegreeter.org).
• Free, self-guided tour of the Art Deco masterpiece Rockefeller Center (212/332-6868, www.rockefellercenter.com).
• Free taste of farm-fresh produce, homemade breads, cheeses, cider and more at the Union Square Green Market (212/477-3220, www.cenyc.org).
• Free warm-weather performances in the city parks by the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Shakespeare in the Park, and many more (City of New York Parks and Recreation Special Events hotline 888/NYPARKS, www.centralparknyc.org or 212/539-8750 for information on Shakespeare in the Park).
• Free tapings of popular TV shows (call in advance) like Late Night with David Letterman (212/975-5853, www.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/), Live with Regis and Kelly (212/456-3054, ww.tvplex.go.com/buenavista/livewithregis/), etc.
• Free concerts, film series and other special events in adjacent Bryant Park (212/768-4242).
• Free concerts and dance performances under the giant palm trees at the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden on Lower Manhattan’s waterfront (212/945-0505 or visit www.worldfinancialcenter.com for updates).
• Free admission to any of the 20 Historic House Museums located in the New York City parks (Historic House Trust of New York City, 212/360-8282, www.nycparks. org).
• Free cruise on the Staten Island Ferry for a spectacular view of the lower Manhattan skyline, harbor and the Statue of Liberty. The ferry is free at all times (718/815-BOAT).
But if you have money to shell out, you can always watch a Broadway play. Like Flower Drum Song, now playing at Virginia Theatre (245 West 52nd Street), starring our very own Lea Salonga and Jose Llana with Filipino-Chinese playwright David Henry Hwang. We managed to get tickets and came in early, only to be unseated by the rightful owners of the seats a few minutes before curtain time. Believe it or not, the tickets that a Filipino friend unwittingly got for us were dated a month later. "Honey, you came one month too early," an usherette tells us in jest. Seeing the disappointment on our jet-lagged faces, the lady at the ticket counter was only too happy to produce tickets for the night’s performance for us. As they say, so on with the show!
All that watching, walking, sightseeing and shopping can make you very hungry. As every foodie probably knows, New York is home to some of the finest cuisines the world has to offer. We oblige our taste buds with a few samples from Balthazar (a bustling French brasserie where the oysters are a must-try); Bolo, where owner-chef Bobby Flay of Food Network’s Hot Off the Grill explores Spanish cuisine (he may even make an appearance to check on your food; one of our guys sat on chewing gum and instantly got an invitation to a one-on-one dinner with Flay plus the promise of a Bobby Flay book); and Katz’s delicatessen (where the fresh and juicy pastrami and salami are really yummy, it was once voted best delicatessen by Food Network).
Surely, New York has something to nourish body and soul. Ah, to live and live in New York!