Neighborhood at risk: Lower East Side

While the Lower East Side can mean a number of neighborhoods, today the name usually applies to this area south of Houston Street and east of the Bowery and has become synonymous with the immigration history of the United States.

The property was once part of three colonial-era farms of the Stuyvesant, Rutgers, and Delancey families. As the city crept northward in the first decades of the 19th century a residential, middle class neighborhood grew. A few of the early Federal style row houses still exist, although they have often been enlarged as they were converted into tenements and commercial space.

In the mid-19th century, more affluent residents continued the move uptown, and German immigrants took their places. By 1871 this neighborhood was the world’s fifth largest German “city.” So began the neighborhood’s role as a place of first settlement for successive waves of immigrants. Most famously, Eastern European Jews made the area home from the 1880’s into the 1920’s. Italians and Sephardic Jews moved here in the 1920's. Hispanics followed in the 1960's, and today there is a large Asian population.

In the 1860's, in an attempt to house the booming population (and to make money), row houses were demolished, and tenements built in their places. These buildings with multiple apartments on each floor fall into three categories: pre-law (before 1879), old law (1879-1901), and new law (post 1901). While there were laws passed in 1862 and 1867 attempting to ensure the quality of materials used and some level of hygiene, they were not enough, or not enforced enough, to alleviate the grim living conditions. Old law tenements, built after the 1879 law that required hall toilets and airshafts, are also referred to as “dumbbell tenements” for their shape. The 1901 law called for larger buildings with improved light, ventilation, and toilet facilities, and for the first time required similar improvements to older tenements. Few new law tenements were built.

Style was not much of a consideration for tenement builders or owners. Usually it was not about keeping up with what was in fashion, but using whatever cornices, lintels, and other elements that were readily available. Early tenements from the 1860's show some signs of the Italianate style, while those built in the 1870's sometimes display Neo-Grec design. A few new law tenements show influence of the Beaux-Arts style. Typically the architects had little or no formal training and were of no particular note. On occasion, a well-connected, upper class property owner would hire someone well-known such as Trowbridge and Livingston or the prominent architect and housing reformer Ernest Flagg.

More often than not, a store operated on the ground floor of a tenement building. These storefronts often exhibit Italianate cast-iron piers, large glass windows, and galvanized iron cornices. Such businesses brought in more money for building owners than the apartments above, and a wide variety of shops were needed to serve the needs of the ever-growing population. Wholesalers established a foothold early on, and in the 20th century retailers known for their discount prices have drawn in shoppers from outside the neighborhood.

With the pressure to make the changes ordered by the 1901 law and further measures enacted in 1929, many owners no longer found their tenements profitable. Apartments were often closed off while commercial establishments remained on the ground and basement floors. Other tenement buildings were demolished in street widening and slum clearance projects of the 1920's and 30's.

The centerpiece of the proposed district is 97 Orchard Street, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. Built in 1863, a time before architects’ names were recorded by the city, the building, 5-stories with a raised basement, is typical of the area. The structure has a brick façade, stone lintels and sills, and a galvanized iron cornice. A pair of shops operated in the basement. Some 7000 people from more than twenty nations lived in this building between 1863 and 1935.

The Lower East Side’s importance has already been acknowledged with designation on the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places. Only designation as a New York City Historic District though can protect the area from the economic and development pressures that threaten it.

For more information, contact Margaret Hughes, Director, ImMigrant Heritage Project, Lower East Side Tenement Museum at mhughes@tenement.org