Ubiquitous tenement buildings are a staple in New York popular culture. The red brick buildings with a fire escape hanging off the outside wall are featured on the silver screen and in music videos across decades. The Tenement Museum is inside an 1880s tenement that it bought in 2011 with each unit renovated to represent New York City history in a particular decade.
The guided tours last for about an hour and will bring you through two or three units. Perhaps you want to learn about how 19th century German immigrants lived, Depression-era Jewish families, or 1960s Chinese migrants. Each apartment and its many former inhabitants have stories to tell—some of those people are still alive.
I could tell you stories about how my mother used to tell me stories of my great-grandmother lowering a bucket with money out her window to exchange for food from a roving vendor, but this museum preserves oral history in audio, video, and print form in context for generations to come, capturing their hopes, dreams, and aspirations along the way.
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