A dear friend wanted to go to the movies with me, but she, being an adult in her 40's wanted to see some sensitive French film, and me, with the taste of 17 year old boy, only wanted to see either Dark Knight or Wanted. So we compromised and went to the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side (97 Orchard St, to be precise.) There are a variety of tour options, and we chose the 'Getting By' tour, essentially exploring how families in the 1860's and the 1930's got by with the vicissitudes of life.
It was a wonderful tour! They have restored a tenement building in Orchard St, coincidentally the oldest building the block, and done a huge amount of research about the people who lived in it, and then took us into the building and told us two family stories based on the facts they had uncovered.
Just standing in the apartment, seeing how dark it would be without electricity, feeling how hot it would be, even with an electric fan and imagining standing there in long skirts and petticoats, I swear I would faint! And they were so tiny, ( 320 sq foot each) and held families of 2 adults and however many kids there were - often 3 or 4. And with no running water, and steep dark stairs, it just illuminated, beautifully, what the real conditions were for the workers of those times.
I really enjoyed it and will definitely take any tourists who come my way to it. Quite often in England there were beautifully restored regency houses (or even Elizabethan ones) to explore, and I loved going to them; but they were the homes of the very rich. Here we saw how the rest, how more likely we ourselves would have lived, and that was a valuable perspective.
It's so obvious how much harder lives were in those days (of course we know that, but seeing that corridor without electricity, just made you want to run away.
Definitely 2 hours well spent.
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