Visiting the Tenement Museum was an interesting experience because we’ve always had an image in our minds of how early 20^th century immigrants lived.  We had previous knowledge from books we’ve read, like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, and from our American History classes.  This trip was enlightening because we were able to compare our predisposed notions to the reality of the actual apartments.

The Tenement Museum is an unorthodox museum in most ways.  First of all, it’s not set up like an actual museum.  Rather, it has a gift shop through which you enter, which is where we met with our tour guide, and she took us through into the preserved tenement apartment building it’s attached to.  Inside, we toured through the actual apartments, which are furnished with genuine artifacts from the 1900s to the 1910s.  Going from one apartment to the next brought us to a different time period, so we were able to compare how drastically living conditions changed from then to now.

Generally, our ideas of what living conditions in tenements were like were accurate.  However, there were certain aspects of the lifestyle that caught us by surprise.  For example, we did not picture anyone actually setting up workshops for garment production in their own homes.  These apartments are barely large enough to live in, much less hold workers, materials, and fabrics.  Such working conditions were most common when factories had not yet sprung up.  Up to three people would be sleeping on one couch, a crib would be sitting in the kitchen corner, and there would be no room for kitchen tables to eat at.

Eastern European Jews frequented these apartments in the early 20^th century, so it occurred to Ellie that if she had been born 80 years earlier, those living conditions would have been her own.  That put the whole experience into perspective for Ellie, and made it more personal.  She really enjoyed the interactive nature of the tour, and the fact that she knew the personal histories of the actual families that lived in the apartments.  It made envisioning the past much easier.

Adrianna is of Polish descent. She could relate to the inhabitants of the tenement because she is also Eastern European, although her ancestors were not persecuted and forced to leave their home country because of her religion, Roman Catholicism. Instead, she can relate to the inhabitants because other factors such as economic prosperity encouraged other Eastern Europeans to move to New York City. Eastern European Jews and Italians were not the only people who lived in tenements that were similar to the Tenement Museum—other nationalities lived in the neighborhood too. Like Ellie, if she had been born in Poland and moved with her family in the 1900s then she too would have lived in a small cramped tenement, and most likely with more than three other people like she does now. She imagines she would have to work to help her parents bring food to the table and resign from school.

Over years, many ethnic groups  traveled to the United States, settled, worked, and gradually assimilated to be called “American”. In the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, an uncommon ethnic group to the United States, the Italians, immigrated to the United States in masses. The Italians brought with them their family-centered peasant cultures and settled in their own localized groups, maintaining whatever Italian culture and traditions they bought with them. However, with time, the Italians and Americans started interacting more often and an exchange of cultures began. The Italians eventually assimilated into American culture and became “American.”

The foreign-born Italian population in the United States’ prior to the 1880s was small. The majority of Italian immigration to the United States occurred between 1880 and 1920 when the Italian unification posed economic hardship (mainly due to the feudal system prior to the 1800s, in which Northern Italians were the land-owners) on Southern Italian farmers. Between 1876 and 1924, 4.5 million Italians immigrated to the United States. However, the mass Italian immigration was put to an end by the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924, which put severe quotas on the number of immigrants allowed to enter. Therefore, the foreign-born Italian population stopped growing. Accordingly, Italian cultures and traditions of today and the decades prior can be traced to the cultures and traditions of the  Italians who came to the United States between the 1880s and 1920s.

Newly arrived  Italians settled in groups within their densely Italian populated communities in the Northeast. For example, Sicilians settled with Sicilians, and Neapolitans settled with Neapolitans. Each cluster  was surrounded by other ethnic groups, who the Italians eventually assimilated with. The Italian immigrants were able to maintain their culture in these communities. Italians maintained use of their own language through newspapers and entertainments such as theater. Also, each cluster of Italians maintained their own family and cultural values. Despite such attempts to preserve their culture, with every generation onwards, the Italians made strides towards becoming assimilated.

Second generation Italians followed in their parents’ footsteps by working menial jobs, living in their segregated communities, and marrying amongst each other. The foreign-born Italian parents did not value education because time spent in school was time spent away from work. In the 1920’s and 30’s, however, the next generation valued education more and often attended vocational schools. Second-generation Italians still continued working in the factories, and in the 1930s, the second-generation Italians joined hands with Americans in labor unions and lobbied for benefits, a step closer to becoming one with the Americans. Following World War II, through their proximity to urban centers or economic growth and rising levels of education, Italians reached managerial positions and attain other white-collar jobs. By 1991, Italians had on average, met or exceeded the average national wage, which proved that they established a solid foothold in America.

We can thank the courageous first generation Italians for laying the groundwork for the development of pizzerias, pasta restaurants, and Little Italys we see today.

One of the largest groups of immigrants that have come to the United States was from Germany.  In fact, up until the 20^th century, German immigration was increasing, albeit slightly.  A majority of these immigrants had always been poor farmers who would eventually settle in the south. However, as seen using the immigration explorer tool, much of this changed in the 20th century as immigration from Germany started to decline slowly.  This decline continued for the next few decades as political tensions in Europe, especially in Germany, rose.

Pre-WWII Germany became a very oppressive environment for the Jewish population.  Under the Nazi Party’s 25 Point Program, Jews were segregated from the “Aryan” population and could not participate in the simplest of tasks, such as going to schools or universities.   This, in turn, had a direct effect on German immigration to the U.S.  During the 1930’s and early 1940’s, a new group of immigrants started coming to America.  About 80% of these immigrants were Jewish.  Furthermore, a significant percentage of the immigrants (both Jews and non-Jews) were intellectuals, a group that had never before come to the U.S. in such large numbers.  In addition, these immigrants, unlike their predecessors, came to the U.S. and settled in cities, further emphasizing the deviation from earlier immigration patterns.

The intellectuals who settled in cities played significant roles in the U.S. during the World War II.  One of the most famous of these figures, perhaps, was Albert Einstein, a German-Jew who, at the time of the war, worked on the Manhattan Project (which allowed the U.S. to develop the first Atomic Bomb).  Similarly, Marlene Dietrich, a German-American actress, toured the states raising war bonds, being one of the first celebrities ever to do so.

During the war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt would also appoint two prominent Americans of German descent to top commands in the Army and Navy, General Dwight D. Eisenhower in Europe and Admiral Chester Nimitz in the Pacific. In fact, General Eisenhower would later become the 34^th president of the U.S.  Clearly, the influx of German immigrants not only affected American society, but also the outcome of the war.  Despite the slow rate of immigration during WWII, German influence in America remained strong.

German immigration may be on a slight decline for now, but past immigrants have fused well with countless other ethnic groups in modern day America.  Influences such as German pubs, Catholics, Lutherans, and craftsmen have all been incorporated into American society.  All in all, German immigrants remain the largest ethnic group in the United States, with over 45 million having made their way to the U.S. in the past couple of centuries.  As a result of this, German-Americans, comprising more than a fourth of the white population, have effectively assimilated into American culture all the while preserving their traditions while adapting to new ones to this very day.