Cabinets of Wonder – Week 6

Soft Spots…

Occasionally, you have a real soft spot for something.  For me, its Cheetos, men who like to argue intelligently and 5 inch heeled shoes from Kurt Geiger.  Its arguable whether any of them are good for me.

More wholesomely though, I also have a real soft spot for one of New York’s downtown museums: The Tenement Museum.  Its the first museum I ever visited in NYC, and also the first place I ever worked in America.  Both quite big milestones. Milestones aside, I love this place because it is truly about people, real people – and their lives and their struggles.  By the end of a tour at the Museum I always come away with increased respect and a greater understanding for the immigrants who came to NYC and lived in quite awful conditions.

This week, the whole class was assigned to go visit the Tenement Museum to see an example of a single-issue museum, in this case: America’s urban immigrant history.  The Museum operates differently to most in that the only way to see it is to go on a tour, lasting approximately 1 hour.  I took the ‘Getting By‘ tour, which tells the stories of two immigrant families: the Gumpertz family, originally from Germany, who lived at 97 Orchard Street during the Panic of 1873 and the Baldizzi family, originally from Sicily, who lived at 97 Orchard Street during the Great Depression.

Our Educator immediately cottoned on to some important points as she was introducing herself, for example, she saw one of the members of the group taking notes, and asked who was taking the tour for a class assignment – and then offered us handouts at the end of the tour with detailed notes of what we had just seen to save us scribbling during the tour.  These are little things, but indicate a high level of experience and also thoughtfulness.

Our Educator Judy Levin introduces herself

The key to making this tour such a success for me, is that in explaining the lives of the people who lived at 97 Orchard Street, our Educator continually asked us questions – for example, ‘does this look like a kitchen to you?’ as we looked around the cramped, dark ‘kitchen’ of Nathalie Gumpertz – with no running water or refrigeration.  In addition, she also linked the past to the present.  As we discussed the problems of low income housing in Manhattan today, the problems of the past seemed incredibly relevant, even though the apartment we were looking at seemed a million miles away from the apartments we live in now.

A tour group enters 97 Orchard Street

There was good use of technology.  We stood in the kitchen of Adolpho and Rosaria Baldizzi listening to a recording of their daughter, Josephine (now a grandmother herself) telling us about the soap her mother used to wash her with and how her father used to play checkers with her at the kitchen table.  It was incredibly emotive seeing and hearing these recollections.  The way in which someone’s story is told is important – the museum stresses that these are stories about real people, and their personal stories are told with dignity, especially when discussing sensitive topics, such as extreme poverty or loss of a family member.

Finally, from a business perspective, the Museum does very well with its branding – the logo is incredibly distinctive.  The shop is known in its own right as a great place to pick up NYC history books and as a source for materials on the stories of specific immigrant groups in the US.  The Museum has a vibrant Tenement Talks evening lecture series, also available online.  The website is innovative and I found it easy to navigate.

I appreciate that this is clearly a review from someone with a ‘soft spot’ for this particular place, but its key success is linking the history to real people, and furthermore, linking these real people to today.  In doing so, the Museum increases the overall impact of the building and its history on the visitor, and encourages understanding and empathy with the challenges faced by immigrants, or any family struggling for whatever reason.