This tenement building on 97 Orchard Street on the Lower East Side is now a museum offering a series of guided tours which demonstrate how immigrants survived economic depressions between 1863 and 1935. We visited the restored homes of the German-Jewish Gumpertz family, whose patriarch disappeared during the Panic of 1873, and the Italian-Catholic Baldizzi family, who lived through the Great Depression.
Natalie Gumpertz (pictured), who overcame the mysterious disappearance of her husband to become a dressmaker and lived out her days in comparative luxury on the Upper East Side.
Rosaria Baldizzi, a deeply religious housewife who would sit in her kitchen listening to Italian music and soap operas on her radio and weep.
The Gumpertz kitchen: no gas or electricity, no water, no windows or ventilation. The toilets are two flights down in the back yard.
Natalie Gumpertz's salvation: her sewing machine.
The Baldizzi's bedroom circa 1935. Still small but much lighter and brighter.
The Baldizzi kitchen looking into the bedroom. The bathtub is on the left beneath the makeshift counter with the plates. The toilet is now out in the hall.
(Below) A tenement apartment being returned to its original condition. In later years there were shops on the ground floor which the museum hopes to recreate as funds become available.
Plans are underway to renovate another building on the corner of Orchard Street as an extension of the museum.
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