Lower East Side Tenement

Lower East Side Tenement Museum is different from most museums. It's set up on an old tenement musuem and redone so it looks like the way a tenement used to look years and years ago so you can get a feel of how cramped and gloomy it was for immigrants when they first came to America. The tour cost's around nine dollars more

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum is a life-changing experience. It's hard to picture just what life was like in Hell's Kitchen during the high times of immigration, but this is as close as it gets. The museum is actually a series of tenement houses that have been either restored, partially restored, or stabilized to allow visitors to see what life was like. Each apartment represents a specific family story and contains both artifacts and recorded oral history. The guides are absolutely fantastic. As a museum professional, I applaud this museum for their efforts and cannot wait to go back when they open new exhibits! more

Try to picture a time when you are newly arrived in America. There's little or no work available and the only available housing is one small smelly room that has to fit your entire family and the rats. That's what is was like for immigrants years ago the Tenemant museum does a good job to make you realize that. The museum is small but offers excellent informative material. Interesting place to visit. more

Enter through the gift shop which has many interesting and unique toys and books and sign up for a guided group tour of a renovated tenement with rooms from different periods from the 1800s. The tour leader really helps make the experience and they are very knowledgeable. It can get quite hot inside in the summer as there are only fans and you need to go up and down stairs through narrow halls to squeeze into small furnished rooms but it is a very memorable interesting and educational experience to see how people lived not that long ago, easily imagining how they passed one another through the dark hall to get to the outhouse and get water. This museum is not wheelchair accessible so visitors must be able to negotiate narrow stairs and leave via the fire escape-like exit from the upper floors. Admission is about $12/tour and I wouldn't recommend taking more than one unless it's a cool day. Not for young children who will be bored and not able to touch anything! more

I've always loved the Lower East Side because it's one part of Manhattan that seems to retain a strong feeling of what it used to be like. It's also the place that a lot of our immigrant ancestors ended up when they first came to America. The Lower East Side Tenement Museum will give you a slice of what life was like in the neighborhood 100 years ago - from the rich mix of cultures that poured in from across the oceans, to the horrendously cramped living conditions of the old-time tenements. Displays in the museum offer educational films, a miniature of a typical tenement building and a number of day-to-day artifacts from the time. The walking tours focus on various aspects of the area's history and are a good way to get an idea of what the neighborhood was like over the years. They also put what you see now into context. Great for kids! more