Tenement Building at 97 Orchard Street

About this property

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum is a museum and National Historic Site located at 97 and 103 Orchard Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The museum's two historical tenement buildings were home to an estimated 15,000 people, from over 20 nations, between 1863 and 1935 (97 Orchard Street) and 1888 and 2015 (103 Orchard Street). The museum, which includes a visitors' center, promotes tolerance and historical perspective on the immigrant experience. The building at 97 Orchard Street was contracted by Prussian-born immigrant Lukas Glockner in 1863 and was modified several times to conform with the New York State Tenement House Act. When first constructed, it contained 22 apartments and a basement level saloon. Over time, four stoop-level and two basement apartments were converted into commercial retail space, leaving 16 apartments in the building. Modifications over the years included the installation of indoor plumbing (cold running water, two toilets per floor), an air shaft, and gas followed by electricity. In 1935, rather than continuing to modify the building, the landlord evicted the residents, boarded the upper windows, and sealed the upper floors, leaving only the stoop-level and basement storefronts open for business. No further changes were made until the Lower East Side Tenement Museum became involved with the building in 1988. As such, the building stands as a kind of time capsule, reflecting 19th and early 20th century living conditions and the changing notions of what constitutes acceptable housing. Thanks to extensive restoration over many years (overseen in phases by Perkins Eastman and Li/Saltzman Architects) visitors can explore two different buildings—97 and 103 Orchard Street—and view recreated apartments that represent eras across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Tenement Museum was founded in 1988 by Ruth J. Abram and Anita Jacobson. The museum's first key property, the tenement at 97 Orchard Street, was designated a National Historic Landmark on April 19, 1994. The National Historic Site was authorized on November 12, 1998. It is an affiliated area of the National Park Service but is owned and administered by the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. The site received a Save America's Treasures matching grant for $250,000 in 2000 for preservation work. In 2001 the museum was awarded the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence silver medal. In 2005, the museum was among 406 New York City arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. The National Defense Authorization Act for the 2015 fiscal year expanded the National Historic Site designation to also include the tenement at 103 Orchard Street.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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