New York City's Tenement Museum Highlights 1950s Immigrant Experience

<div class="block">Cheddar News anchor Shannon LaNier visited the Tenement Museum to get a firsthand account of the 1950s immigrant experience in New York City.</div>

Wake Up With Cheddar

Wow. Check out all of these items here at the Tenement Museum in New York City and the phone, it really is like going back in time here. But we're seeing how immigrants live in New York City and cat is gonna tell us a little bit more about the rooms that we're seeing. This is three different families. Right. That's right. Yeah. In this exhibit, we have one apartment uh where we can tell the stories of three different families. They didn't all live in this apartment at the same time. Right? Um It's actually a pretty big tenement apartment. Um But it gives us a chance to look uh the history of immigrants, migrants and refugees from the 19 fifties on. So tell us about this room here. We're in the dining room. So we're in the dining room. This is where we can imagine the Epstein family sitting down to a meal together. Um, the parents and were Holocaust survivors and they raised two New York foreign daughters, Bella and Lima uh in this apartment and we're about to step into another room which is a kitchen of a different family. Exactly. This is the size Velez's space and they were a Puerto Rican family who moved to the neighborhood in the 19 fifties, but live here in the sixties. And some of this might look familiar uh to uh to viewers and we really get a chance to look at how Puerto Ricans are transforming uh the city at this point. And this room here, this would be the same family's living room room and get all of these items. I mean, like the plastic. Are you serious? Oh, that I'm sure brings back a lot of memories for our viewers. I know and you can get the sound effect too if you want, didn't get the sound of it, right? Does that bring back? I would not want to sit on this in the summer. No, no. And um so Ramonita Rivera is the mother of this family uh was probably really proud of this room. This was the biggest apartment they lived in as a family and we actually bought this plastic cover for the couch at Joe's fabrics across the street where Ramonita was a customer. So we're continuing the legacy of Ramonita and she worked in the garment industry. Uh like many immigrants and migrants did when they arrived to New York. So the next family that we talk about in this era are the Wongs. Um they were um Chinese immigrants who come to the neighborhood in the 19 sixties and we talk about their lives in the 19 seventies and eighties as part of the transformation of Chinatown. And we say all of this is authentic, like the typewriter here on the desk. Exactly. We've got typewriter with the tab glass, maybe looks uh familiar as well. Um But so the Children in this family, some of them were immigrants, some of them were born here. Um, and they, you shared their memories with us of what it was like to grow up in the Lower East Side in this diverse neighborhood. What's the reaction you get from people when they come through here and see these memories in this space? Uh It's a lot of, of connection. Um Even if you didn't grow up in the Lower East Side, even if your family wasn't uh of immigrant origin, that plastic covered couch might bring back a story of a mother, a grandmother universal for a lot of families, right? Which I love because these projects they're specific, but they can be universal and tell much bigger stories. And that's the same for a space like this. OK. This is a recreated garment factory from the 19 eighties that would not have been in this particular tenement would have been a little further south in a much bigger space. Um But Mrs Wong supported her family by working in a factory like this. And so many immigrant and migrant families over the years have supported themselves and their families through this kind of work making clothes. This has been an interesting and amazing experience to kind of go back in time to what their lives would have been. Like. Do you ever do recreations and have like, people come in and act out some of their families do? Yeah. So all of our experiences are by guided tour. You can come visit the museum on a tour of any of these family stories. And some of those tours involve getting to interact with a costume interpreter, someone taking on the role of a real resident of one of these buildings. And that really helps us make the emotional connection and the connection between the past and present. All right. Well, thanks for giving us a glimpse inside the tenement museum. Thanks so much for coming to visit.