Having visited the Tenement Museum in lower Manhattan, we were exposed to the life that many immigrant families, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, experienced when they first arrived in New York through Ellis Island. All these immigrant families shared a common idea: to take advantage in the “Land of Opportunities”. The immigrant families envisioned America to provide them with all the tools necessary to live a happy life. But was this assumption rational or just wistful thinking on part of the immigrants? A brief visual tour of one of the tenements on 97 Orchard Street gave us the answer. Noisy street vendors and non-stop pedestrians on the black and white pictures along with our guide’s story telling describe the neighborhood livelier than texts do.

The actual tenement museum was a few houses down the road from the visitor center. This clever arrangement took us back in time to the past Orchard Street where many ancestors of current New Yorkers lived in. The entrance to the building was very narrow, thus we had a hard time getting through. The first thing we noticed was the compact space and dim lighting. Another astute observation we made was that everything was made of wood — this was quite hazardous in the event of a fire. Moving up the creaking staircases, we encountered the first room where the apartment suite was not entirely restored. In this suite, the interior was left purposely untouched to give visitors the atmosphere of that time period. Jacob Riis, a muckraker, described the living conditions of immigrant families in tenements in hopes to bring about social reform. In his book, Where the Other Half Lives, he described that a single room contained 6-7 members of one family.

In particular, we noticed sweatshops in each of the apartments. The immigrants worked long, laborious hours trying to make as much clothing as possible because they were paid per piece and not per hour. Imagine the atmosphere of the room while they worked and the sweat pouring over their brows as they sewed the cloth together. They probably did not waste a single second of their working hours doing anything else besides concentrating on the clothes. It was shocking how wealthier people even detested the clothing because they considered the immigrants dregs of society and did not want these immigrants handling their clothes.

The entire family worked for countless hours everyday, slept in cramped spaces every night, lived with caution because of a vulnerability to fire, and dreamed of a better life for their children. Yet, their traditions lived on their culture thrived in their hearts throughout the hardships and tribulations. These people must be acknowledged for what they have been through and what they experienced. The heart of the immigrant lives on, even today.