Our Last Hurrah

Our final class takes us to the heart of New York where we go to the Lower Eastside, the Bowery, little Italy, and Chinatown. Our first stop will be the historic Essex Street Market, which has a wide variety of ethnic foods that you can sample.  When I am in the city I am usually by Essex Street its funny that I was here last night and now I am here again for class."Writers of the late 19th Century considered Hester Street, site of the neighborhood's push cart market, the quintessential ghetto street" (BG, 120). Much like Hester Street, Orchard Street also had a large push car market. "The push carts represented one of the few ways for unskilled immigrants to eke out a living" (BG, 120). Mike gave details on Mayor LaGuardia had Essex Street Market built to house the push cart peddlers.  This market has changed throughout the years since it started business in 1940 adapting to the changes of people in the neighborhood.

From the Essex Street Market, we walked around for a little and saw some signs of gentrification. There was the occasional glass building and even a few more art galleries that we took a quick look in that had the usual strange pieces. After walking around Ludlow Street and Hester Street, we made our way to the Tenement Museum! This was one of my favorite parts of the entire class. There was so much to see and so much history to take in. The class was split into two groups and my group went across the street and into an old tenement that is a part of the museum on 97 Orchard Street. This tenement was “founded in 1988 to preserve the heritage of the nation’s immigrants, honoring the millions who lived on the Lower East Side and in other immigrant ghettos” (BG, 122). It is a six story building with a couple of the apartments redone to look like they did in the 19th century when the immigrant families were living there. Walking into the building I was amazed and also nervous that the floor was going to cave in. The rooms were so tiny and I could not imagine living in those apartments with more than one person let alone fifteen other people. The tenements were “built to exploit all available space and maximize the return for the landlord” (BG, 122).

We went into one of the apartments that were redone to look like it did when the immigrants lived there. This apartment belonged to the Moore family in 1869, a family that emigrated from Ireland. The struggle that this family had to endure was unbelievable to listen to and impossible to imagine going through what they did. Bridget and Joseph Moore lived in extremely poor conditions in the tenement on 97 Orchard as well as the other places they lived in. Back then, no one knew that germs made you sick and that if things were clean it would prevent illnesses.  There was no running water, no bathrooms, and no light in the apartment. While Joseph was at work, Bridget had all of the house chores to do and take care of her daughters, one of which was very ill. She had to go down all the flights of stairs and out into the courtyard just to get the water that was right next to where people used the bathroom! Not only was it unsanitary conditions that the Moore’s were living in, but the apartment was the size of some people’s master bedroom. The entire family slept in the same room with their baby Agnes who was very ill and died. Bridget and Joseph ended up having eight children and only four of them made it to adulthood. Four of them died due to illness related to the unsanitary conditions and at age 36, Bridget passed away. Only one of their daughter’s, Jane, carried on the Moore family line, marrying Roger Hanrahan, also a child of Irish immigrants. They moved to Queens and had two sons and three daughters, all of whom became nuns. Their descendants live throughout the country, but some stayed here in New York City. Joseph Moore lived until he was 71, which is unbelievable considering the poor conditions and poor health care in the 19th century.

We then walked down the back of the tenement and saw the courtyard. The courtyard was way too small for all of the people to use that lived there and there were only about five outhouses for the entire building. These conditions were so horrible that it is amazing that anyone survived them. Taking the tour of this building was a great because I learned a lot and was able to actually experience a part of the immigrant history.

We went to Tom and Jerry’s, the number two “hookup spot” in the city (wink wink). The bartender, Ruby told us a tad bit about the type of people that go there and how she has seen gentrification happening in her own bar with wealthier people coming in. We then hippity hopped to the Congee Village Restaurant, which is located at 100 Allen Street on the corner of Delancey Street and around the block from the Tenement Museum. The class was split and sat at two large tables family style. We had a beef dish with some vegetables, chicken, sesame chicken, and some soup that tasted mucousy.

Then our last tour of the lower east side was lead by our tour guide.  Drew took us through the Bowery, one of Manhattan’s oldest streets which “got its name from the Dutch word for farm, bouwerie, when the area was farmland” (BG, 153). We walked through Seward Park, “named after William H. Seward, the governor of New York, US Senator, and secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln” and saw the Forward Building across from the park, a building “built for the Jewish Daily Forward, the country’s most influential Yiddish daily newspaper” (BG, 124).  We did some walking through Chinatown and ended up on Doyers Street, a street that has a sharp turn in the middle of it known as the “Bloody Angle” unlike any other street in the city (BG, 112). We ended our tour at the Five points, a five pointed intersection on Baxter and Mosco. We had our last group gathering and from there we parted ways.