www.tenement.org

Just wondering if anyone had done any of the Tenement Museums tours of the lower east side and, if so, what you thought of them.

Here are the answers

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...1&tid=35098891

signed,
goddesstosearch

I have and I love them - I am not sure I ever posted on that particular thread - but have mentioned them before in nyc links -

The Confino Living History Tour is one of my favorites.
We were a group of adults traveling together, and on our tour were a few other adults with children between ages of 8-16 and everyone was mesmerized and found it so educational and interesting and the guides are in costume, accent - it is exactly as described on their web page -

The Getting By Tour is also interesting - we did that a different trip - you can't go wrong with any of them I don't think

Get your tix ahead of time, leave yourself time when you get there to see the film on Ellis Isl/Immigration for at least 20 minutes and look in the bookstore/etc either before or after - it is all across the street -

Then spend some time on the LES yourself walking the streets, enjoying, eating, shopping, and if you haven't watched Crossing Delancey ( the movie) you would enjoy watching that before you go.

Also, good to have a bottle water with you imo.

I just read the other link - so all good advice and everyone seemed happy with it too - I have to do that one last tour -

they are all based on census records, artifacts, things the family has given them. The Confino family has members have a reunion in NYC and come back and go through the tenement !

Last I was there, they were finding more things in the basement - in walls - making them think there was a bar in the basement at one point and they are following up on all that history too - the young kids who work on this are fascinating to talk to also -

FYI: another tour we did one of our last trips was the food tour of the foodsofny.com group - we did Greenwich Village and that was fascinating combination also of history, architecture, food tastings, just wonderful in all regards.

Thanks everyone, and especially for the other links (goddesstosearch!). I think we will do one of these tours and will definitely explore the LES afterward.

You've reminded me that I want to go to Ellis Island, too.

All of this (and Central Park) is the reason we're going in spring this time. For some reason, we always seem to be in NY in the winter so this will present a whole new set of opportunities for us.

goddesstosearch!

goddesstogo, I did the Getting By tour - it was fascinating, and very, very worthwhile. The apartments look as though the families had just stepped out for moment.

I've done two of the tours, and grew up in an apartment much like those (but with more plumbing). To me, they look like the tenants threw away most of their possessions and clutter, gave the place a thorough cleaning, and THEN stepped out for a moment. IMHO, the Spartan look is no more realistic than any other show house, though perhaps necessary in order to make space for the tourists and to discourage theft. It enables visitors to focus on specific features, but even before our materialistic era, several people living in a small space would have filled it up more than that.

Check out the photos in Jacob Riis' book "How the other half lives" (originally published in 1890 and reissued in 1971 and 2004) for actual portraits of home life in the eras represented by the museum.

Anonymous, have you brought this inaccuracy to the attention of the Tenement Museum staff?

The Tenement Museum staff are dedicated professionals. I'm sure that their selectivity in their presentation was informed and deliberate. They want to impress visitors with the sparseness and difficulties of the residents' lives, and have arranged the apartments accordingly. Arrangements that were more authentic might be so distracting that they would actually be less successful at conveying the key messages accurately.

They are also sparse because they are missing items like clothing, personal items, things like say, school books, food, - they have some kitchen items but not all - if they had all that - as Anonymous points out - there would be no room for the visitors to sit !

So I think they choose the few , more important things reminiscent of life and what affected their daily lives and include those items for discussion in the tour -

I think that yes, they do about as best they can while keeping it interesting -

but what impressed me was that at least what they did have was genuine and historically accurate.