2 to 3 hours (approx.)
Daily Tour
15 people
English
Enrich your understanding of New York as a city of immigrants, exiles, and refugees on this walking tour of the Lower East Side. With an informative guide leading the way, learn about the African burial ground beneath the city’s pavement, the Italian slum of Mulberry Bend, the Five Points neighborhood of “Gangs of New York” fame, and the waves of poor immigrants who called this corner of lower Manhattan home.
We begin at the former sites of The Five Points neighborhood and Mulberry Bend, one-time notorious slums in New York City’s history. The focus is on the “tenement,” the early purpose-built housing for the working class, mostly immigrant poor whose history begins not far from this spot.
15 minutes • Admission Ticket Free
Jacob Riis and his seminal work, How the Other Half Lives, helps bring to life the past communities that once occupied the site of today’s Columbus Park, between Chinatown and the Court District.
5 minutes • Admission Ticket Free
The heart of the tour is along the blocks of the Lower East Side and the non-stop tenement buildings that proliferated in the Lower East Side from the mid-19th to the early-20th Centuries. Not all tenements were associated with slum communities, though living conditions could be hard. We’ll identify different tenements types from different eras, and witness the decades-long process of tenement evolution following advancing laws.
• Admission Ticket Free
We will have a stunning view of the Municipal Building and the Woolworth Building East Broadway, one of Chinatowns most vibrant street scenes with hidden-in-plain-sight historic gems.
• Admission Ticket Free
One of the most beautiful edifices in the city, The Eldridge Street Synagogue begins discussion of the Jewish experience in the Lower East Side, who, like the massive immigrant waves before them, have their own unique story to tell.
• Admission Ticket Free
One of the first parks in the neighborhood. It was so crowded on opening day it was standing room only. Here, an array of photos from Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives brings the past to life.
• Admission Ticket Free
A newspaper that was an institution for the Jewish community.
• Admission Ticket Free
We pass the back of the museum where they replicate tenement life. Outhouses and clothes line help transport one back in time.
• Admission Ticket Free
DeLancey Street was the clothing discount outlet center of the past.
• Admission Ticket Free
The Allen Street bath house functioned as such from 1905 until 1975, along with about a dozen in the area. This one lasted the longest and was converted to a church.
• Admission Ticket Free
We end the tour on the rooftop of Hotel Indigo. Here we’ll be be able to see a bird’s eye view of the different tenement types, along with a spectacular view of Midtown, a perfect way to end the tour.
10 minutes • Admission Ticket Free
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