What Happened Here?

By the early 19th century, the Lower East Side had evolved into New York City’s manufacturing center. The neighborhood meant jobs and opportunity. For the next hundred years, tens of thousands of immigrants poured in from Germany, Ireland, Italy, Eastern Europe and all over the world.

By 1900, 90 percent of all New Yorkers lived in tenements, buildings with three or more unrelated renters. Tenements were centers of more than family life – from the earliest days some work, often sewing, was done in the home. By the 1890s, tenements had become central to the burgeoning garment industry.

Tiny apartments were turned into garment shops where contract work for large manufacturers was completed. Contract work was labor-intensive, but required little capital, so many immigrants became bosses, hiring others to work alongside them in their shops.

Working conditions were deplorable – 60 hour workweeks were typical. The rooms were poorly ventilated, scraps of fabric everywhere. The warm, moist, stagnant air and fabric dust gave rise to the spread of disease, especially silicosis and tuberculosis. Until the early 1900s, water spigots and privies were outside, down as many as five flights of stairs.

These tiny domestic spaces, where individual immigrant families struggled to make a living, became the focus of national debates about family, work and the role of “foreign elements” in American society.

The Lower East Side is still home to immigrants, from over 36 nations. The same issues – and debates about who is responsible – continue to rage today.

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What Happened Here?