Travels of Margie and Al

Monday, December 7, 2015

Tenement Museum

According to Wikipedia, a "tenement is, in most English-speaking areas, a substandard multi-family dwelling in the urban core, usually old and occupied by the poor. In New York City tenements were first built in the 1840's to accommodate mostly poor immigrants. Many, many tenements existed on the lower eastside of Manhattan. This is where my grandfather lived from when he was born until his early teens.
About 25 years ago on Orchard St, a tenement that had been sealed for about 50 years was discovered. This building which had been unoccupied and essentially untouched for many years became the basis for the Tenement Museum. https://www.tenement.org/ In this building there are 22 apartments and over the year over 7000 people lived there. We very much enjoyed the tour and learning about life in a tenement such as this where until the early 20th century there was no running water, no indoor toilets and coal heat.

The General Slocum Disaster

On a June day, in 1904, at the end of the school season, a local Lutheran church took over 1400 women and children on an outing on the SS General Slocum in the East River. My grandfather, his younger sister and brother, and mother were among the passengers. Midchannel the boat caught fire and quickly burned to the waterline. The life boats were painted stuck and the life jackets did not work. The majority of passengers died from drowning or burns. This was the largest fire disaster in NYC prior to 9-11. Sadly Grandpa's siblings were among those who died from this tragic accident.

The neighborhood of mostly German immigrants never recovered. The church merged with another Lutheran church uptown and the building is now occupied by a Jewish temple.

Day 1 NYC

For a long time I wanted to explore the neighborhood where my maternal grandfather, William Trebing, lived as a young boy. We were staying at the Carlton Hotel on Madison at 28th. We headed down to the lower Eastside, now the Cooper Union neighborhood. Our destination was 106 E 5th Avenue which is where my great-grandfather lived with his family. As we suspected from the map this address no longer exists as the street is part of the Cooper Union complex. This is the view from the next block looking back toward where 106 6th street was. The area is gentrified and no longer has tenements.