Tenement Museum
While not strictly a ‘hidden’ gem, the Tenement Museum is still a fascinating insight into JewishNew Yorker lifestyles. The action takes place on the Lower East Side (you’re beginning to see a theme here, right?), or 97 Orchard Street, to be precise, which was home to a mind-boggling 7000 working class immigrants. Visitors can go on a guided tour around the building and around the neighbourhood, recreating 19th-20th century immigrant life. There are also a range of other activities, known as ‘Tenement Talks’: free readings, discussions, performances, and screenings about New York’s history, population, and culture.Check out the Tenement Museum website at: http://tenement.org/Links to historical images below.http://cdn01.boweryboogie.com/content/uploads/2014/01/1925-620x488.jpghttp://blog.sandrafalcon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/02191405-1024x1024.jpg
Museum at Eldridge Street
The Eldridge Street Synagogue opened its doors at 12 Eldridge Street on September 4, 1887, just in time for the Jewish High Holidays. Hundreds of newly arrived immigrants from Russia and Poland gathered here to pray, socialize and build a community. It was the first time in America that Jews of Eastern Europe had built a synagogue from the ground up.Dozens of Stars of David decorate the Eldridge Street Synagogue’s façade. Here in America, Jews could worship openly and freely. The synagogue was a proud declaration of newly- found religious freedom for the synagogue’s immigrant founders. The synagogue was also emblematic of their economic aspirations. With its soaring 50-foot ceiling and exuberant Moorish-style interior, Eldridge Street provided an inspiring contrast to the crowded tenements, factories and shops of the Lower East Side.For fifty years, the synagogue flourished. Men and women came in their finery, and mounted policemen patrolled the crowds. The congregation hired world-renowned cantors and in 1918 hired Rabbi Aharon Yudelovitch, the first in a series of famed Talmudists and speakers. Thousands participated in religious services in the building’s heyday, from its opening through the 1920s.Check out www.eldridgestreet.org
Forward Building
The Yiddish-language daily paper Forverts, meaning "forward," was founded in 1897 and moved into this ten-story building in 1912. There were many Yiddish papers in New York, but Forverts was the largest, with a circulation that reached 250,000 in the 1920s. The paper's socialist leanings are signified by the carved portraits of Karl Marx, his collaborator Friedrich Engels, and the German-Jewish socialist Ferdinand Lasalle just above the second floor of the building's facade. Note that there is also a fourth figure, whose identity is disputed. It is thought to be either Wilhem Liebknecht, an influential German socialist, and August Bebel, a German politician. The Forward Building was taken over by a Chinese church when the newspaper moved its offices uptown in 1974 and it has since been converted into condominiums.
Educational Alliance
Educational Alliance has served Lower Manhattan since 1889. Originally a settlement house for East European Jews immigrating to New York City, the history of the Lower East Side and the history of Educational Alliance are deeply intertwined.In addition to basic classes and programs on how to be a good American, The Alliance offered a creative outlet via The Educational Alliance Art School, recreational respite in the Rooftop Garden (serving 10,000 people per day in the summer of 1903), and the theater (Eddie Cantor made his stage debut there in 1905), and other escapes from cramped tenement life.
SHTEIBL ROW
This block of East Broadway was known as "Shteibl Row," and is one of the few stretches of the Lower East Side where Jewish life is still visible. Shteibl means "little room" in Yiddish and refers to the one- and two-room synagogues that Hassidic Jews established for prayer, study, and community activities. Several of them are still in use today. Number 233 is home to the Congregation Beth Hachasidim de Polen, while the Chevra Zemach Zedek, founded in 1894, still worships at no. 241. Note also the houses at no. 247 and 249, which date from the 1830s, before the well-to do neighborhood was subject to mass immigration.http://www.jpost.com/HttpHandlers/ShowImage.ashx?ID=295968
Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy
The Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy is the only non-profit organization dedicated solely to the historic preservation of the Lower East Side’s sacred sites. Founded in 1998
Bialystoker Synagogue
Built in 1826, the Federal-style building originally housed a Methodist church and served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. A door along the balcony exposes a roughly 200-year-old ladder leading to an attic where Canada-bound slaves hid during the Civil War. In 1905 a congregation of Polish Jews from Bialystok converted the building into a synagogue, transporting a stunning, three-story ark from Italy. Paintings of zodiac symbols corresponding to Jewish calendar months span the sanctuary ceiling. Bialystoker offers frequent services to its 300-member congregation. Link to photo at http://www.nycjewishtours.org/images/bialystoker/bstkr2.jpg
Angel Orensanz Foundation
The oldest synagogue building in the city had been shut down and systematically vandalized for over a decade when Spanish sculptor Angel Orensanz swooped in, purchasing the property in 1986 and converting it into an art studio. Now known as the Angel Orensanz Foundation, the synagogue was designed by Berlin-born architect Alexander Saelzer, who intended for it to resemble the Cologne Cathedral. Upon its opening in 1849, it was the largest synagogue in the country and could hold up to 1,500 worshippers. Orensanz’s foundation continues to host occasional shabbas services—in addition to a vast array of cultural programs—and is a popular spot for weddings and bar mitzvahs.
Katz's Delicatessen
A true New York institution, Katz's has been doling out its signature overstuffed pastrami and corned-beef sandwiches as well as hot dogs, egg-cream sodas, and kosher dill pickles since it opened its doors over 120 years ago, in 1888. Grab a ticket when you enter and make your way to the various counters to arrange your feast before taking a table amid the old-world posters and photos of celebrities, like Ben Stiller and Bill Clinton, who have dined here. If you ever saw the movie "When Harry Met Sally," you may recall Meg Ryan's famous fake orgasm scene, which was filmed here. Another famous footnote at Katz's is the restaurant's "send a salami to your boy in the army" campaign, which has been going since World War Two. These days, if you prefer to send a salami to a friend, they'll happily oblige. Just ask at the counter.See photos by clicking on the links below.http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/05/14/nyregion/katz-deli-slide-NBZJ/katz-deli-slide-NBZJ-blog480.jpghttps://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/e7/76/8d/e7768ddea8aeda1c35618da6fccbcc28.jpg
Economy Candy
Morris "Moishe" Cohen opened Economy Shoes on a Lower East Side corner in 1937, near the end of the Great Depression. Even as the state of the union slowly improved, shoe sales waned, and Morris’s side candy business became the store’s sole revenue maker. Recently laid off workers flocked to the Rivington Street storefront, seeking childhood nostalgia in the form of Jujubes, Sugar Daddies, Candy Buttons, and Mallo Cups. And so began Economy Candy.
Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery
About 1890, Yonah Schimmel, a Romanian immigrant, used a pushcart to start his knish bakery. As business grew, a small store on Houston Street was rented by Yonah and his cousin Joseph Berger. When Yonah left the business a few years later, Berger took over the business, retaining the original name. In 1910, the Bergers moved the business to the south side of Houston Street, at its current location. Yonah Schimmel's has been family owned since its inception and is currently operated by Yonah's great nephew, Alex Wolfman.[5]
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
TRIANGLE FIREThe deadliest disaster to strike New York until the 9/11 attacks 90 years later, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster is important for many reasons. The Brown Building stands as a monument to the 146 Jewish and Italian immigrants killed by a massive fire and locked doors, and is both a National Historical Landmark and a New York City Landmark. Most of the Jewish victims were buried in the Hebrew Free Burial Cemetery (another entry on our list) with tombstones referring to the fire. For a modern memorial, time your visit with ‘Chalk’, an annual project by local New York filmmaker Ruth Sergel, where local artists walk across the city, chalking the names and ages of the victims onto their former homes.
