New Tenement Museum Exhibit In New York Highlights Irish Immigration

On June 17, the Tenement Museum will open its first new exhibit in six years.

The tour, tentatively titled An Irish Family in America, will explore the story of the Moores, Irish immigrants who lived at 97 Orchard Street in 1869, and themes such as public health and sanitation on the Lower East Side. This is the museum's sixth restored apartment and its fourth public tour.

The Tenement Museum is the first historic site to document the daily lives of Irish immigrants in New York.

While names like Tammany Hall and the Dead Rabbits are well-known, the lives of average, laboring-class people remain virtually unexplored in major museum exhibits.

"The Moore family is both distinctive and typical of the experience of many Irish immigrants to New York," said Steve Long, vice president of collections and education. "The story of the Moores provides a window into our city's past while also offering a fresh perspective on the experiences of today's newcomers."

The apartment will be restored to how it might have looked in 1869, complete with period furnishings and artifacts. In addition to the restored apartment, the exhibit will feature a strong multimedia component, using the Irish musical tradition to narrate the immigrant saga. Nineteenth-century Irish and American songs, researched and re-recorded by ethnomusicologist and Irish musician Mick Moloney, will play while images of broadsides and political cartoons are presented. This is the first Tenement Museum tour to feature sound and imagery so prominently.

Throughout the tour, visitors will also be invited to consider how our understanding of disease has changed from the mid-19th century to the present, and how these changes have shaped the lives of 97 Orchard Street's residents and countless other immigrants. The Moores will be juxtaposed with the Katz family, Russian immigrants who lived at 97 Orchard Street during the early 1930s. While the Moores faced unsanitary conditions, swill milk, cholera, and little governmental oversight into housing conditions or health care, the Katz children learned about dental hygiene in school and were encouraged to drink milk as part of a healthy diet. In fact, the changes in milk production, storage, and consumption from the 19th to 20th centuries will be an important theme on this hour-long tour.