★★★★★ 5.0
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Tenement Museum
This building had real families living in it when you were born! 103 Orchard Street stayed packed with immigrants until 2015, making it one of America's last working tenements. Built in 1888 when Ellis Island was brand new, this narrow five-story brick building squeezed entire families into four-room apartments smaller than your classroom. The worn staircases you're about to climb carried thousands of kids just like you - but they had to haul water buckets upstairs because there were no taps in their tiny homes!
Did You Know?
- The Tenement Museum is centered on a historic building at 97 Orchard Street, which was home to an estimated 7,000 people from over 20 nations between 1863 and 1935, offering a vivid, firsthand look at the immigrant experience in America through meticulously recreated apartments and personal stories of real families who lived there.
- Architecturally, 97 Orchard Street is a time capsule of urban living: originally built with 22 apartments and a basement saloon, it was repeatedly modified to meet evolving housing laws—adding indoor plumbing, air shafts, and eventually electricity—before being sealed in 1935, leaving its upper floors untouched for decades until the museum’s restoration began in 1988.
- In 2024, the museum launched its first permanent exhibit focused on a Black family—Joseph and Rachel Moore, who lived in Lower Manhattan tenements during Reconstruction—responding to a decades-old community request and expanding the narrative of who shaped New York City’s history.