Even with neighborhood support immigrants often found city life difficult. Many immigrants lived in tenements - poorly built, overcrowded apartment buildings. One young woman in New York City described the difference between her hopes and reality in the new land: [I dreamed] of the golden stairs leading to the top of the American palace where father was sup-posed to live. [I] went home’ to . . . an ugly old tenement in the heart of the Lower East Side. There were stairs to climb but they were not golden.” Miriam Shomer Zusner, Yesterday: A Memoir of a Russian Jewish Family
Tenement rooms had few or no windows to let in fresh air and sunshine. Comfort was also scarce, with so many people crowded into such small spaces. Running water and indoor plumbing were also scarce. So was clean water cities often dumped garbage into local rivers that were used for drinking water. Disease-causing bacteria grew easily in these conditions. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid, influenza, and tuberculosis spread quickly in crowded neighborhoods. Children were the most vulnerable to these diseases. For example, babies born in Chicago in 1870 had only a 50 percent chance of living to the age of five.
Lower East Side Tenement Museum
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, located at 97 Orchard Street in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, is a National Historic Site. The five story brick tenement building was home to an estimated 7,000 people, from over 20 nations, between 1863 and 1935. The museum, which includes a visitors' center down the block, promotes tolerance and historical perspective on the immigrant experience.
The building was originally bought in 1863 by a Prussian born immigrant. When first constructed, it contained 22 apartments and a basement level saloon. Modifications over the years included the installation of indoor plumbing (cold, running water, two toilets per floor), and gas followed by electricity. In 1935, rather than continue to modify the building, the landlord evicted the residents, boarded the upper windows, and sealed the upper floors, leaving only the stoop-level basement storefronts open for business. No further changes were made to the building until the museum became involved in 1988. As such, the building stands as a kind of time capsule, reflecting 19th and 20th century living conditions and the changing notions of what constituted acceptable housing.