Keara Sebold
Keara Sebold is a third year PhD student in the Department of History at Boston University. She received her BA in history from Florida State University in 2019 after successfully defending her thesis concerning women’s colleges in the 1920s, for which she received the Bess Ward Honors Thesis Award and the Scott and Ina McNichols Undergraduate Research Award. She has worked as an archival assistant at the Institute for WWII and the Human Experience as well as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and as a research assistant for the Center for Antiracist Research, contributing to their Antibigotry Convening policy report. Prior to the city-wide shutdown, she was hired as freelance events staff at the Tenement Museum in New York City. She is currently working on processing the Doriot Anthony Dwyer Collection at the Boston Symphony Orchestra archives and is working as a Teaching Fellow as she makes progress towards the completion of her doctorate.
Adorning the Tenement: A Reflection on the Shifting Immigrant Worldview
At 97 Orchard Street, in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a perfectly restored “pre-law” tenement house stands as a monument to the community of immigrants who made their home there over a century ago. The building is now the residence of the Tenement Museum, which offers walking tours of the neighborhood and a glimpse into the rich history of immigration and development that the Lower East Side holds. As the tenement operated prior to the Tenement Acts of 1867 and 1901, a simple walk down the hallway of 97 Orchard Street shows the frantic updates made to the building so it would conform to the new laws for better lighting, ventilation, and toilets.[1] The way in which the electric was installed, the haphazard bathroom situation, and the tight fit of the corridors simultaneously offers a glimpse at what tenement conditions were before the Acts were passed, and how exactly landlords were able to comply with the new regulations in the cheapest possible manner.
Even more fascinating, however, as you stand in the hallway, is the way in which the interior of the building seems to be decorated. Within the building, you can catch a glimpse of the personalities of the residents by examining the ways they decorated their space. For example, John Schneider’s pride in his heritage and the heritage of his family is apparent in the way he decorated his 19th century saloon that operated out of 97 Orchard Street. Maps of Germany and large lunch counters and tables for the whole family demonstrate how the German saloon was a place of familial gathering, with women and children occupying the space just as much as the men of the household.[2] Schneider and his family were not the only ones to operate a shop out of the basement space in the Tenement, and with each owner came decorations that showed pride in their heritage and culture, as well as attempts to embrace their new American identity. In part, much of the improvement in decoration and design of tenement buildings came about due to increased competition and the ability to raise rent prices for better accommodations; modern comforts and design represented the new lifestyle and opportunities so many immigrants had come to the United States seeking. Tenement owners such as Barney Isaacs, who had lived on Orchard street in the mid 19th century was just one of many who attempted to lure new residents with new amenities, nicely wallpapered hallways, and faux marble mantles.[3] Decoration was indicative of an immigrant’s simultaneous drive to adapt to American domestic culture while facing inherent disconnect from the wealthy middle class’s modes of displaying wealth. The way a tenement flat was decorated, and how those modes of decoration evolved and interacted with the larger community, highlights not only the resistance of many immigrants to a total loss of their traditional domestic culture but also the evolving intentions of European immigrants not only to come to America for financial gain, but to establish a life there with a degree of permanency.
By examining the way new European immigrants in New York City decorated the tenement housing they lived in, we may observe a rich story about the creation of space in unlivable conditions, the drive to claim permanency, and the drive to do the very opposite. By examining the furniture, portraits, wallpaper and rugs within the tenements of the Lower East Side Jewish community, the story of two groups of Jewish immigrants battling with each other over class status, anti-Semitism, and Americanization unfolds. German Jewish immigrants residing in uptown Manhattan fiercely promoted an upper-class minimalistic, clean style of decoration to their Eastern European counterparts residing in Lower East Side (LES) tenement housing, but it was rejected in favor of colorful, plush, and plentiful décor that served doubly to hide the state of disrepair of the tenements and associate the residents with the American middle class. The lack of personalization and decoration in the tenements housing Italian riornati who intended to return home tells a drastically different story; one of a resistance to Americanization and to some level, comfort, in a space that was always intended to be temporary.[4] Those single men who always intended for their residence to be transient, and who sent the majority of their money to family overseas, left almost no material record of decoration of the tenements they resided in – they felt less permanence in the ownership of the space they occupied. By examining furniture and decorations in tenement housing as a way to claim space, and to claim permanency, we are able to form a more nuanced picture of the minds and lives of New York City’s immigrant population in the Gilded Age.[5]
The “Lodger Crisis” and the Development of the Tenement
By 1910, more than 41% of the population of New York City was foreign born; the city had consistently played host to many of the United States immigrants, but the turn of the 20th century saw the highest level of immigration to ever flood the city streets.[6] A significant proportion of this immigration consisted of Italian and Eastern European Jewish families who entered the city in search for economic opportunity or escape from the conditions of hardship faced in their own nations. In turn, they settled in distinct neighborhoods and formed vibrant ethnic communities within the confides of Manhattan, specifically those areas considered to be “downtown” of the more established residents. In examining the intention of immigrants to eventually return to their home countries despite their move to the United States, an obvious dichotomy between Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Italian and other non-Jewish immigrants exists. In their analysis of the Jewish immigrant community in New York City, historians Annie Polland and Daniel Soyer note that “between 1908 and 1924, 33.3% of all immigrants returned to their home countries, while only 5.2% of Jews returned to Eastern Europe.”[7] Jewish immigrants also contrasted with many of their contemporaries hailing from other nations in that the majority of immigrants were families; while many Italian immigrants were single men who had left their families in Europe, nearly 50% of all Jewish immigrants were women, and 25% were children.[8] The unprecedented influx of new immigrants searching for housing as quickly and as cheaply as possible led to a boom in the construction and occupation of tenement housing, a style of multi-family housing typically associated with poor conditions and cheaper rent rates.
Jacob Weeks, with his construction of what was likely the first tenement building in the 1820s in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, set a precedent for the conditions of crowding and general unattractiveness that the tenement would become known for. The Weeks building had little to no amenities one would expect from a proposed family home, yet it showed the landlords of the city how the population density of their property could dramatically increase and began the race to construct tenement housing that was simultaneously attractive to the growing immigrant population yet cheap and easy to maintain.[9] The next great innovation in tenement housing was by the hands of German immigrant Martin Ficken in 1875, with the inclusion of a parlor in the construction of his tenements. The parlor space transformed the tenement from a simple set of rooms to sleep in while you search for better economic prospects to a place where domesticity could live, and where families could entertain guests and establish themselves with any sense of permanency.[10] This conceptualization of the tenement as a domestic and quasi-permanent space was likely triggered in part by the increasing levels of immigration to the city – decreased housing availability drove tenants to make the best of what spaces they could afford. Above all, the advent of the tenement parlor meant that families could decorate their living spaces with the intention to showing it off to guests, permanently establishing the tenement and the manner in which it was decorated as a reflection of the values, desires and intentions of the immigrant population.
As the age of immigration progressed, increased media coverage of tenement conditions led to a large movement for the progressive reform of the urban tenement. The “lodger evil” crisis, as it was named by such reformers, was spurred on by the publication of Jacob Riis’ 1890 book How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York.[11] How the Other Half Lives was a book of compiled photography taken by Riis, a journalist who, as an immigrant himself, was driven to document and draw attention to the conditions the poorest of New York City experienced. He made use of new technology in the world of photography, including the flash feature, to highlight the dimly lit, dirty, and crowded nature of tenement housing. In the first section of the book, labeled “Genesis of the Tenement” Riis speaks of his own experiences with the tenement housing situation in the city, remarking that “The first tenement New York knew bore the mark of Cain from its birth, though a generation passed before the waiting was deciphered.” Alongside a map of the layout of one such tenement building, in which twelve families shared extremely close quarters, Riis emphasized specifically the sheer number of “dark” rooms within a tenement building. A dark room, without sufficient lighting or ventilation and in harsh contrast with the traditional clean, bright model of domesticity, was described as a “dark bedroom, prolific of untold depravities.”[12] This evocative language combined with well-lit photographs and drawings showing exactly how dirty and crowded the tenement life was had exactly the intended impact in motivating an entire generation of housing reformers.
Specifically, the “lodger evil” crisis pushed against the crowded elements of tenement housing, and how many tenements often split rent or took on lodgers in order to lighten the financial burden of housing. This pushback against lodging was slightly misinformed as the percentage of metropolitan households in the United States with lodgers had been steadily decreasing since 1850, and the existence of lodgers had significant historical precedent separate from immigrant tenement conditions.[13] Nonetheless, the focus on the crowding of tenements and the prevalence of lodgers serves to highlight how dire the financial condition of many tenement residents was. It would make sense that immigrant families who had entered the tenement with the intention to stay would be more likely to eventually have the savings and the drive to worry about the cosmetic appearance of their living space; if an immigrant’s only intention was to earn money to send home or eventually return home with, lavishly furnishing a foyer or decorating the walls would seem to be a silly excess.
The Lower East Side Jewish Community
The sense of permanency and the drive to integrate into American society can be seen in the rituals many Lower East Side Jewish immigrants participated in upon their arrival to New York; including purchasing new American made clothes, taking portraits to send home to Europe, and attempts to decorate their tenements to reflect “middle class standards, if not income.”[14] It seems that these “middle class standards” of decoration were a mix of what Jewish immigrants perceived as indicative of American middle class wealth and decorating styles they held on to from their nations of origin. These practices often in fact clashed directly with what middle class housing reformers identified as the correct way to decorate a tenement flat. Indeed, many housing reformers who had arrived prior to 1880 pushed for Jewish housewives to adopt a minimalist, clean, and colorless decorating style labeled the “architecture of visible health.” This style promoted “plain wallpaper, or better still, no wallpaper at all, white painted walls, and unadorned, rugless, wood floors.”[15]
These reformers were the German Jewish New Yorkers who lived mostly uptown and considered the new downtown immigrants “unenlightened”. They sought to influence the decoration of tenements as a way of articulating and enforcing the modern American domestic culture amongst Eastern European Jewish families who were flooding the Lower East Side with their unique style and culture. The relationship between the German Jewish residents of New York and the Eastern European Jewish immigrants is unique, and the attempted Americanization of the new Jewish immigrants cannot be understood without first understanding the pressure placed upon them by German Jewish New Yorkers. The influx of Jewish immigrants hailing from Germany occurred mainly in the decade between the 1840s and 1850s, at significantly smaller and more disbursed rates than the later turn of the century Jewish immigration wave. The Napoleonic wars were largely to blame for the migration of German Jewish immigrants into New York, and due to their relatively small numbers and the fact that they were somewhat indistinguishable from non-Jewish German immigrants, historians such as Selma Berrol and John Higham have concluded that the German Jewish immigrants did not, upon arrival, face the levels of anti-Semitism or general bigotry that the Eastern European Jewish population soon would. Berrol notes that: “Following the national pattern, in New York City the German Jews were scattered. The largest group and also the poorest… lived in the German enclave on the Lower East Side… Many other families were scattered throughout the city. In language and culture they were often indistinguishable from non-Jewish Germans and this may help to explain the absence of hostility towards them.”[16] Likewise, Higham argues in his work Strangers in the Land that following the Civil War, the sentiment that all white men who immigrated to the United States could achieve equality began to degrade due to rising tension within the nation and its demographic fractions. While earlier white Jewish immigrants may have been included in this concept of racialized equality, later immigrants would not be. [17]
As the Gilded Age advanced, and anti-Semitic sentiment grew throughout the world and within the United States, German Jewish citizens who had managed to achieve significant economic success found themselves rebuffed in social situations largely dominated by the White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) population of the northeast. Ivy league schools such as Harvard University saw the rapidly increasing Jewish population of their student body as a serious issue: University President Lowell spoke against the rapid increase in Jewish enrollment as something that would harm the homogeneity of the general student body, writing that Harvard’s problem “was a Jew problem” and that “the fact that they form a distinct body and cling, or are driven together, apart from the great mass of undergraduates” would irreparably tarnish the universities reputation.[18] As a reaction, admissions restrictions were put into place, hotels began to turn away Jewish guests, and private schools rejected Jewish children.[19] As this rise in anti-Semitism coincided with the beginning of the turn of the century immigration age, German Jewish Americans concluded that the Eastern European Jewish immigrants who had entered the city in a much different pace and settled in different patterns were to blame for the rise in anti-Jewish social actions. It was, therefore, absolutely essential that these new Jewish immigrants become Americanized as quickly as possible, with the more experienced German Jewish dedicating themselves to this new mission – a mission that pushed for the Eastern European Jewish community to adopt the clean, simple decorating style that would associate them with the upper middle class domestic culture. Newspapers such as the American Hebrew contained a “Women’s Column” that sought to educate the poor, non-Americanized Jewish immigrants on the essential nature of keeping the home clean, sanitary, and simply decorated.[20] However dedicated to the mission these German Jewish uptown reformers may have been, their push for a domestic style overhaul seemed to have surprisingly little effect on the actual decorating tactics of those immigrants occupying tenement flats.
Jewish immigrants who resided in tenements rejected this minimalist style of decorating, opting for more colorful wallpaper and plush furniture, adorning their walls and tables with memorabilia and frames.[21] The promoted style of stark cleanliness was likely rejected for two separate reasons, the first being that those proposing the minimalist style had seemingly little idea of the actual conditions of a tenement and the general impossibility of avoiding clutter in such a small, crowded space. The application of intricate wallpaper and large photographs and calendars was useful not only in brightening up a dull space, but in hiding the state of disrepair the walls were often in. In describing the decoration of the tenement flat she shared with her family, writer Anzia Yezierska explained “on the worst parts of the wall, where the plaster was cracked and full of holes, we hung up calendars and pictures from the Sunday newspapers.”[22] The second reason is that the previously discussed perception of “middle class standards” didn’t align with the minimalist decorating style at all. The tenements were already unadorned when the immigrants moved in; the real show of newfound wealth and a sense of establishment in their new lives was to fill their home with color and luxuries. The typical Jewish tenement style was one full of “colored wallpaper, brightly patterned linoleum, and yards of lace and fabric trimmings… lavishly illustrated merchant calendars hung everywhere.”[23] The furniture also reflected these ideals, with immigrant families favoring plush furniture with colorful upholstering, and large tables and cabinets fighting for space in crowded parlors. The parlor itself was a part of the home indicative of the blending of Jewish domestic tradition and new American aspirations. As historian Andrew Heinze notes, the attraction of the parlor was based on “old sabbatical imperative to make the home a sanctuary from the world of work” as well as Victorian Anglo-American ideals of displaying material goods and wealth to guests to illustrate refinement.[24]
The disconnect between what German Jewish housing reformers lauded as the appropriate tenement style of decoration and what those living in tenement houses actually wanted and displayed was not the only instance of reformers demonstrating their ignorance of how immigrant domestic culture differed from middle class American domestic culture. In his analysis of the decoration and construction of tenement flats, Zachary Violette notes that “Indeed, there was a sharp disconnect between what tenement residents wanted and what housing reformers wanted for them.” The physical design of these tenement flats, some aspects of which were perceived as unsanitary or unattractive to housing reformers, served to “encode not just tenants economic position but important aspects of their culture as well.” A more complex layout of varied rooms, including the all-important parlor preferably situated at street level in the front of a home, reflected the European cultural emphasis on a lack of concern with privacy and living “a majority of life on the street.” Reformers took general offense to these designs, as they did not reflect the middle-class aspirations of “air, light and family privacy” deemed essential in the decoration and layout of a home. [25]
We can see the effect these reformers had on the tenement lifestyle in their influence on the New York Tenement House Act of 1901, a bill which enforced codified reform of tenement housing with seemingly little understanding of the actual general condition of many tenement flats. While the bill was progressive in its efforts to improve the general condition of tenements, many buildings had already adapted the improvements that were codified in the Act.[26] A dichotomy is apparent: decorating styles of Jewish immigrant homemakers reflected a desire for permeance and integration into American society while maintaining traditional Eastern European cultural values. Simultaneously, the disconnect between the uptown housing reformers and those families who occupied the tenement buildings highlights the American middle class’s incomprehension of the immigrant communities maintenance of traditional cultural and domestic styles. Disinclination to fully Americanize was not a phenomenon limited to Jewish immigrants, as the battle between maintaining native domestic cultures and adapting to American ideals is a nearly universal immigrant struggle. The struggle was only intensified within those communities where the United States was not necessarily seen as a new homeland for all.
Italian Immigrants and the Riornati
While many Italian immigrants settled into New York City with permanency during the age of immigration, a significant portion of the population spent only a few years in the city before returning to Italy. Little can be found concerning the decorating styles of the riornati, those 40% of Italian immigrants who returned home from the United States in the decade of 1900-1910. The most likely cause for this lack of knowledge is simply that there is little to discover; those individual immigrants traveling temporarily to New York City in search of higher wages likely did not feel the same desire to integrate themselves with American domestic culture that their Jewish immigrant counterparts did, and excess money was sent home to the family as per the original motivation for coming to the new world in the first place. Scholars estimate of a range of 4 million to 30 million dollars sent from America to Italy yearly by 1896 – a laughingly wide range that nonetheless displays the sheer amount of funds Italian immigrants were sending back home instead of spending on personal amenities or comforts.[27] Riis, in his section entitled “The Italian in New York,” made specific note of the temporary nature of the Italian immigrant and how it was the root of why tenement conditions were so deplorable for the Italians, saying “the ‘princely wages’ have vanished with his coming, and in their place hardships and a dollar a day, beheft with the padrone’s merciless mortgage, confront him.” He continues on to reference the riornati’s propensity to send their wages home rather than use them to plant domestic roots in their city of residence. Riis claims that as these men were “bred to even worse fare”, they “take(s) both as a matter of course, and, applying the maxim that it is not what one makes but what he saves that makes him rich, manages to turn the very dirt of the streets into a hoard of gold, with which he either returns to his Southern home, or brings over his family to join in his work and in his fortunes the next season.”[28] While he does make note that some immigrants were, eventually, paying for their families passage into the country, the pairing of these passages with his desolate photographs implies that this good fortune would be rare.
Even if the male Italian immigrants were successful in bringing their families over, Riis strongly implies that their living conditions may not entirely improve – due in part to their lack of assimilation into American culture. One of his photographs, titled “Home of an Italian Ragpicker, Jersey Street”, shows an immigrant mother and child in their tenement home.
The mother is clutching her child and looking upwards, in an almost prayer-like pose, and the condition of their home is desolate. A single hat makes up the entirety of the decorations in the tight space, and most of their possessions are stored in sacks or metal baskets. It is not clear by the photograph where the family sleeps, or even how large the family who is sharing the space is. The starkness and impersonality of the blank walls, as well as the fact that all their belongings are neatly packed away and able to be moved at any time, implies a transience of the family. They do not seem to entirely belong to the space they are in, nor does it seem to belong to them. However, one part of the photograph is especially interesting to note within our analysis of the rioranti and domestic culture. There is what seems to be a small broom and dustbin in the corner of the room. The room, while stark, is remarkably clean, and the placement of the broom next to the mother implies that this small level of domesticity is due entirely to her presence. In contrast to the clutter of his other shots of tenement rooms, Riis seems to be drawing a clear line between the presence of a fuller immigrant family and any sort of domestic culture in the tenement space. The conditions are still desolate, as Riis intended for the work to spur reform, but the connection of assimilation and domestication to bettered conditions is still made.
In the same section, Riis places partial blame for the condition of Italian tenants in their lack of desire to integrate into American culture – to Americanize themselves as the German Jewish immigrants promoted. On the subject of learning the language of their new land, Riis says of the Italian immigrant this: “His ignorance and unconquerable suspicion of strangers dig the pit into which he falls. He not only knows no word of English, but he does not know enough to learn. Rarely only can he write his own language. Unlike the German, who begins learning English the day he lands as a matter of duty, or the Polish Jew, who takes it up as soon as he is able as an investment, the Italian learns slowly, if at all.”[29] Here Riis is irrevocably linking the lack of Americanization of Italian immigrants with the slum conditions of the tenements, conditions so crowded and destitute that decorating wouldn’t even be considered. Riis’ analysis of the conditions of Italian immigrants is limited in that his work was published prior to 1890, and therefore cannot consider later changes to the mindset of the Italian immigrant – especially that of those who decided to remain in the city. However, the popularity of Riis’ work allows the conclusion that the link between slum conditions and lack of Americanization persisted throughout the age of immigration. The blame placed upon those immigrants who could not or would not conform to American domestic standards would only serve to heighten the hostility that likely contributed to so many Italians returning to their native land.
Despite high rates of return for these original Italian immigrants, we also see a majority of immigrants decide to instead bring their families over into their new life in New York, bringing their domestic culture and styles of decoration with them. One such family was the Baldazzi family, who resided at the aforementioned 97 Orchard Street (now the Tenement Museum) in the Lower East Side. While we cannot know if Aldolpho Baldazzi originally intended to remain in America or eventually return to Sicily, he entered New York as a single worker hoping to improve his finances, and eventually was able to pay for his wife and family to join him in America. His daughter, in recalling her experiences at 97 Orchard Street in the 9 years she lived there, took special notes of the Italian influences on her mother’s organization of the home and constant playing of Italian radio. The arrival of the family made the tenement flat into a home, and the atmosphere of mixed Italian and American domestic culture reflected the values of so many other tenement families who had arrived with the intention to stay.[30] The domestic traditions Italian immigrants brought over from their European hometowns are representative of the wider immigrant community that settled into tenement housing throughout New York and the surrounding cities, yet through the established existence of the riornati we can see the correlation that decoration and dedication to domestic culture had to a sense of permanency and family within immigrant communities. The decorations and designs of Italian tenement flats, similarly to those of Jewish immigrants, became notable when the resident began to see the city, and thus America in general, as their new home.
Conclusion
The start of the Gilded Age saw an unprecedented rise in the immigrant population of New York City, as well as throughout the nation in key cities such as Boston, Chicago, Detroit and other industrialized cities. When the federal government passed the Immigration Act of 1924, restricting the number of immigrants from each nationality to 2% of the total number of people from that nationality as shown in the 1890 census and completely restricting immigration from Asian countries, it marked the end of the influx of immigrants and the beginning of the established population making their own moves towards these urban industrial centers. Despite the levels of immigration slowing to a trickle in comparison to the decades prior, the population composition of cities such as New York was irrevocably changed; nearly a century later the foreign-born population of New York accounts for around 38% of its total residents and 45% of its workforce.[31] Thanks in large part to the impact made by Italian, German, Irish and Eastern European Jewish immigrants at the turn of the 19th century, New York City is globally regarded as a melting pot of different cultures and peoples, and a place of economic and social opportunity. These roots begin with those immigrants who had established their lives in the run-down tenement houses of downtown Manhattan and decided to stay; combining a drive for Americanization with their own domestic culture to decorate what little spaces they had and carve out a part of the overcrowded city streets as their own. The decision these immigrants made to stay, to bring their families, their cultures and their ambition to New York is clearly seen in the evolution of their homes, how they were designed, decorated and shared with the community.
End Notes
[1] “Why 97 Orchard Street?” (Tenement Museum Official Website, The Tenement Museum, Sepetember 19, 2019), https://www.tenement.org/development_news/why-97-orchard-street/
[2] Kazal, Russell A. “Migration History in Five Stories (and a Basement): The Lower East Side Tenement Museum.” Journal of American Ethnic History 34, no. 4 (2015): 77-93.
[3] Violette, Zachary. “The Better Sort of Tenement: Competing Notions of Improvement and Living Standards.” In The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age, 57-86. Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2019.
[4] The term riornati was derived from the verb ritornare, meaning “to return to” or “to give back to”.
[5] In discussing the domestic culture surrounding immigrant life in tenement housing, historians have focused largely on the reform movements surrounding the conditions of the tenements, and how the tenement buildings themselves evolved with the ever-changing population of New York City. Zachary Violette, in his new work The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2019), focuses on the architecture and amenities included in tenement buildings throughout the United States, highlighting specifically the New York State Tenement House Act of 1901 and to a lesser extent, the 1867 First Tenement House Act, which improved the living conditions of tenants by requiring fire escapes, proper ventilation, and indoor restrooms among other reforms. Violette does in part discuss the way the buildings were decorated, but as a way to show the measures landlords were taking to draw tenants into their buildings rather than as a reflection of the cultures and desires of the immigrant residents themselves. The domestic culture surrounding the decoration of Eastern European Jewish immigrants does, however, differ from other immigrant groups who had different relationships with the concept of Americanization and who arrived in the country with less intention to stay – specifically Italian immigrants. Most literature surrounding the Italian immigrant tenement life is centered around the families who settled in the city, and not the single men who came to the country temporarily. Much of what we know about the physical appearance of the tenements these temporary immigrants lived in comes from photographic documentation from reformers of the era, specifically Jacob Riis in How the Other Half Lives, (New York, Simon & Schuster Publishing, 1890).
[6] Beito, David T., and Linda Royster Beito. “The “Lodger Evil” and the Transformation of Progressive Housing Reform, 1890–1930.” The Independent Review 20, no. 4 (2016): 485-508.
[7] Polland, Annie, Daniel Soyer, Deborah Dash Moore, and Diana L. Linden. Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration, 1840-1920 (NYU Press, 2012) Pg. 111-112
[8] Joselit, Jenna Weissman “A Set Table, Jewish Domestic Culture in the New World, 1880-1950” in Susan Braunstein and Jenna Weissman Joselit, eds., Getting Comfortable in New York: The American Jewish Home 1880-1950 (New York: Jewish Museum, 1990)
[9] Violette, Zachary J. The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2019)
[10] Violette, Zachary J. The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2019)
[11] Beito, David T., and Linda Royster Beito. “The “Lodger Evil” and the Transformation of Progressive Housing Reform, 1890–1930.” The Independent Review 20, no. 4 (2016): 485-508.
[12] Riis, Jacob. “Genesis of the Tenement” in How the Other Half Lives. (New York, Simon & Schuster Publishing, 1890)
[13] Beito, David T., and Linda Royster Beito. “The “Lodger Evil” and the Transformation of Progressive Housing Reform, 1890–1930.” The Independent Review 20, no. 4 (2016): 485-508.
[14] Polland, Annie, Daniel Soyer, Deborah Dash Moore, and Diana L. Linden. Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration, 1840-1920 (NYU Press, 2012) Pg. 115
[15] Joselit, Jenna Weissman “A Set Table, Jewish Domestic Culture in the New World, 1880-1950” in Susan Braunstein and Jenna Weissman Joselit, eds., Getting Comfortable in New York: The American Jewish Home 1880-1950 (New York: Jewish Museum, 1990)
[16] Berrol, Selma C. “In Their Image: German Jews and the Americanization of the Ost Juden in New York City.” New York History 63, no. 4 (1982): 417-33
[17] Higham, John. Strangers in the Land : Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1955).
[18] Records of the President of Harvard University, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, as found in Synnott, Marcia G. “The Half-Opened Door: Researching Admissions Discrimination at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.” The American Archivist 45, no. 2 (1982): 175-87.
[19] Berrol, Selma C. “In Their Image: German Jews and the Americanization of the Ost Juden in New York City.” New York History 63, no. 4 (1982): 417-33
[20] Joselit, Jenna Weissman “A Set Table, Jewish Domestic Culture in the New World, 1880-1950” in Susan Braunstein and Jenna Weissman Joselit, eds., Getting Comfortable in New York: The American Jewish Home 1880-1950 (New York: Jewish Museum, 1990)
[21] Joselit, Jenna Weissman “A Set Table, Jewish Domestic Culture in the New World, 1880-1950” in Susan Braunstein and Jenna Weissman Joselit, eds., Getting Comfortable in New York: The American Jewish Home 1880-1950 (New York: Jewish Museum, 1990)
[22] Anzia Yezierksa, Hungry Hearts (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Riverside Press, 1920)
[23] Violette, Zachary J. The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2019)
[24] Violette, Zachary J. The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2019)
[25] Violette, Zachary J. The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2019)
[26] Violette, Zachary J. The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2019)
[27] Berick, Julia. “Hearts and Minds: Italian Americans and their Italian Ties” (Tenement Museum Official Website, The Tenement Museum, 2014) https://www.tenement.org/blog/hearts-and-minds-italian-americans-and-their-italian-ties/
[28] Riis, Jacob. “The Italian in New York” in How the Other Half Lives. (New York, Simon & Schuster Publishing, 1890)
[29] Riis, Jacob. “The Italian in New York” in How the Other Half Lives. (New York, Simon & Schuster Publishing, 1890)
[30] Berick, Julia. “Hearts and Minds: Italian Americans and their Italian Ties” (Tenement Museum Official Website, The Tenement Museum, 2014) https://www.tenement.org/blog/hearts-and-minds-italian-americans-and-their-italian-ties/
[31] NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs “State of Our Immigrant City, Annual Report March 2018” (New York, 2018)