Tenement Museum
History museum · Lower East Side ·
Immersive tours of historic tenement apartments tell immigrant stories
Immersive tours of historic tenement apartments tell immigrant stories
"To accurately recreate cramped, cluttered mid-century tenements for the film, the art department took a field trip to New York’s Tenement Museum to inspect a preserved tenement from 1938; the visit underscored how coal-powered heating left a pervasive dark dust that residents countered by painting rooms bright colors to manufacture a more cheery atmosphere—details that directly informed the look of Marty and Rachel’s homes." - Alexandra Jhamb Burns
"Set inside a historic tenement house (two, technically), guided tours share personal histories of the working-class individuals who lived here and how they made do with cramped quarters to build new lives in America. On neighborhood walking tours, you’ll learn how the Lower East Side’s thriving immigrant population made it the country’s most densely populated area in the 1900s." - Charlie Hobbs, Andrea Whittle
"The Lower East Side Tenement Museum is, as the name implies, a historic tenement house (two, if you want to get technical). On a tour of the tenements, you’ll hear personal histories of the working-class individuals who lived there and see how they made do with cramped quarters to build new lives in America. On a neighborhood walking tour—the other way to visit the museum—you’ll learn about the evolution of the Lower East Side and how its thriving immigrant population made it the most densely populated area in the country during the 1900s." - Charlie Hobbs, Alex Erdekian, Melissa Liebling-Goldberg
"I learned that after a five-year break the Tenement Museum will once again offer 90-minute Lower East Side food tours that take visitors to five food vendors in lower Manhattan; tickets are available online for $55 per person." - Luke Fortney
"A museum that showcases how NYC’s immigrants used to live, providing an intimate, historical perspective on the city’s immigrant experience." - Laura Begley Bloom