Lower East Side, Chinatown, Little Italy, Tenement Museum

     Our walking trip extends to the Lower East Side today and into Chinatown. There are many storefronts with Chinese signs and advertisements in the windows. In front of the shops are carts which contain exotic fruits and vegetables from the Orient. Dried fish and special products including "lucky candy" are displayed.

Merchants in Chinatown supply their community with herbs, teas and authentic specialties imported from mainland China.

The gold rush attracted Chinese immigrants who were experiencing an economic downturn in their country at the time. They also had sea faring vessels which made California more accessible to the Chinese than to those coming from the eastern United States. It was during the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 that the Chinese population in the United States grew substantially (BB, p. 108). After the work was completed on the Transcontinental Railroad the immigrants came east to find work and escape racial hostilities. Public Broadcast System has a documentary on "Becoming American: The Chinese Immigrant Experience"http://www.pbs.org/becomingamerican/. There is a nice site from the city of San Francisco which also describes the role of Chinese immigration during the California gold rush of 1849 http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist6/chinhate.html . By the 1880's California had a large Chinese population. They were the only group against whom the US passed an Exclusion Act.In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by President Chester A. Arthur. It required immigrants to obtain certification from their government that they were eligible to emigrate to the US http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=47 This act lasted for ten years and was repealed in the form of the Geary Act which further restricted entry of Chinese into America. All exclusion acts were repealed in 1943 and replaced with the national origin system. with modifications until the Immigration Act of 1965. The most recent overhaul of US immigration was in 1990. By the 1980's Chinatown in New York City surpassed the population of Chinatown in California. Today Chinatown has spread beyond its original boundaries into the Lower East Side and northward into Little Italy. Sweatshop labor still exists in Chinatown in the restaurant and garment industries, there is counterfeiting of luxury trademarked items and smuggling of illegal immigrants (BB p. 108). Our Gotham NY group had the privilege of eating at the Congee restaurant for some authentic Chinese food.

View of Congee Restaurant roof from Tenement Museum Stairs

     At the Tenement Museum we experienced a reenactment of immigrant life for a specific Irish family and their struggles. Tenements housed many families in small quarters (BB p 122). These houses were originally built for single families who moved out to better homes and were then split up to form multiple family dwellings to house the flood of poor German and then Irish immigrants who came to New York City in the droves in the 1840's and 1850's. Later actual multiple family units were built for that purpose and were considered for the very poor. Sanitation and lack of heat were problems.There could be 30-40 people per outhouse. The water for drinking and washing was right near the outhouse. Saloons were in the basements. Lenders don't live in the buildings and are out of touch with the residents needs. They are more concerned with profits. In the second half of the 19th century when the great grid system divided Manhattan, apartments became a necessity for even the middle class and richer folks as well (BB p 18). The mortality rate for infants was high and babies got sick on 'swill' which was milk diluted with brewery byproducts, ammonia, water and chalk. Young mothers were fooled by those selling tonics which would only put the baby to sleep
http://www.tenement.org/.
     Irish immigrants had mostly been farmers in Ireland and were therefore unskilled laborers here in the city where there were no farms. They mostly worked in the service and building industries.  However, they were subject to widespread discrimination through negative pictorials which appeared in Harper's magazine and ads that said, "no Irish need apply".Germans were largely craftsmen and therefore had skills which could yield better money.
      Later, the Eastern European Jews came to the Lower East Side escaping religious persecution and pogroms. They had pushcarts and sold goods on Essex street. Sanitation was a huge problem. The slums were crowded and dirty and the photos of Jacob Riis helped to expose the conditions of destitution. In the 1930's Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia got the pushcarts off the street in favor of providing roads for cars at the 1939 World's Fair which was held in New York City (BB p 23). Immigrants cared for their own because they feared rejection in the new land. The government wasn't doing anything for them so they formed 'Landsmen Schaften' which were brotherly aid societies to help families with funeral expenses, language barriers and other adjustments necessary for the new immigrants. Italians later followed suit and formed similar groups. The Italians did not come from a unified Italy. They were from different regions in Italy and identified themselves as Sicilian, Neopolitan, Calabrese etc.

     Below is a photo of the Jewish Daily Forward building This housed the Yiddish newspaper for a radicalists, socialists, unionists and suffragettes (BB p 124). Abraham Kahan , the owner of the paper called for assimilation to America through the game of baseball and the building of parks and playgrounds for kids. He also had a column called "Gallery of Lost Husbands" whereby women abroad could search for their missing spouse who came ahead of the family to get established. They wrote to Abraham Kahan with a picture and description of their husband. In the 1960's the newspaper was sold to the Chinese Press who printed Chinese bibles. Today the Forward building is restored with it's original 1900's 'socialists' type decorations to be upscale condominiums. The changes in the building reflect the changes in immigration in New York City. After the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 buildings in New York City were required to provide escape exits and buildings already existing had to construct fire escapes (BB p 135).

     Today Little Italy appears to be only two blocks long. We found the Ferrara's Pastry shop and a host of vibrant restaurants and gathering places. This was a wonderful walking tour which illustrates the history of New York through the experiences of different groups of immigrants.