Day #7 – Lower East Side, Tenement Museum, Triangle/NYU,

Today was our last day with Ed O’Donnell.  It has been a real treat to have him show us around New York City.  He was very knowledgeable and he did not have to refer to his notes to tell us about certain buildings.

The trip to the Lower East Side was fun and showed the changing of the city from German and African, to Italian and Irish, and finally to Latinos and Chinese.  The idea of having the buildings represent the mood for the tourists was very interesting.   The Lower East Side was usually the first stop for immigrants that went though both Castle Gardens and Ellis Island.  Once they were able to scrape their living in the Lower East Side they would find a new neighborhood which is why the ethnic groups changed so much over the years. 

We first stopped at the cross-section where Five Points would have been.  Five Points were first brought to my attention during the Movie:  Gangs of New York.  It is interesting to see that these places that students see in the movies can actually exist.  Today there is really no reminisce from the draft riots, but to be able to show the students what it looks like today is awesome.  My question is why were the artifacts from Five Points in the World Trade Center?  Was there a research lab or something?  It just doesn’t make sense to me that they would be in that type of building, but then again, there have been many stores that I would have never thought I would see in a skyscraper.

Walking through town I could picture how many people lived there and how dark and dingy it could have been with all the waste and people around the areas.  The older buildings that make up a continuous block I could picture hundreds of people living and workings in them, and when Ed explained that there are sweat shops still working in certain areas of the cities it just blew my mind.  The Question about whether or not to close sweatshops can bring up a great discussion in class.  My kids say that they could do without certain material goods, but after being around them, they could not. 

The ideas about Anti-Semitism rising during the immigration shows that the United States really does not ever go away because people want to have it their way and they will always find a way to degrade or put them down.  It never crossed my mind about why there were so many Chinese who ended up in New York, but it is the opposite of why some Irish and Italians headed west to get away from discrimination.  The Quota System would end up halting the flow of immigrants from the West to a halt. 

The Tenement Museum was one of the places that I was most looking forward to seeing over the trip I really wanted to be able to show and explain to my students how small the rooms were and that it was not always just for sleeping, but also a work place.  I really wanted to take a picture of my group in one of the rooms just to put the size of the rooms into perspective for the students.  It would be creative to have the size of one of those tenements marked out onto the floor of the classroom and see if the students would be able to function with 8-9 people in two of the rooms with a bed, stove, couch, table, etc.  The tenement they had seemed a little too nice compared to the ones that we see in the pictures, but then again a museum is not going to let one of those rooms turn to dust to impress a history nut. 

After the Museum, I found my way to the Campus of NYU, and after taking a wrong turn and finding my way to a bunch of sex shops (No I didn’t go in them), I finally made my way to the spot where the Triangle Fire happened.  Matt was right all there was on the building was a small plaque, but to where it stood, and to imagine that there were women jumping for their lives, and realizing that there was no buildings connected to it just hard to believe.  The road that I was walking on was also cobblestone.   I then made it to the bookstore and got some books.

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