To Find Out More

Three fine studies of the old district are: World of Our Fathers by Irving Howe, The Downtown Jews by Ronald Sanders, and Poor Cousins by Ande Manners.

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, located in an actual tenement building at 97 Orchard Street that was home to successive generations of immigrants from the 1860s until the 1930s, gives walking tours of the neighborhood, presents exhibits and dramas, and publishes a newsletter of Lower East Side history. The museum is planning a restoration of the sixteen cramped apartments on its upper floors into a permanent display of the varieties of Lower East Side tenement life. Its phone number is 212431-0233.