April 8, 2015 • 28 mins
The second half of our interview with Dr. Annie Polland from the Lower East Side Tenement Museum focuses on specific figures in the building's history and ongoing research and expansion projects.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And in our previous episode,
we shared the first part of our interview with Dr
Annie Pollen, who is Senior director of Education and Programs
(00:23):
at the Tenement Museum on New York's Lower east Side.
And Annie told us in that first episode about the
discovery of the building that would eventually house the museum
and the neighborhood there on the Lower east Side as
it developed from the eighteen sixties to the nineteen thirties. Today,
we're gonna learn some more about the ongoing research that's
happening at the museum, along with programs and plans for
(00:44):
the museum. We're also going to talk a little bit
about one of our favorite topics, which is food as
it relates to telling the story of immigration in New York. Yeah,
there's some really fun stuff coming up. Do you have
a favorite story or stories of some of the residents
(01:05):
that lived at ninety seven Orchard. That is such a
hard question because I think for all the family, you know,
every family is fascinating, you know, it's kind of like
picking who's your favorite child if you had like seven
children and had to pick one who was the most interesting.
So well, you know, the one of the woman who
(01:27):
fascinates me the most is a woman named Goldy lust
Garden and she and her husband Um ran a kosher
butcher shop at Orchard from approximately eighteen nine to nineteen
o two. Um she was the mother of six children.
She raised her children in an apartment right behind the
(01:50):
butcher store. She probably worked six days a week alongside
her husband. In fact, we have a picture of the
Lustgarden family UM standing outside of their shop, and all
of them, every one of them, I believe, is wearing
an apron, including their little five year old son William.
So this was a family that worked together. And Um,
(02:11):
I'm always fascinated by her thinking about how she'd be
raising her family while also helping to run a business.
And the story becomes even more complicated because Um, in
May of nineteen o two, the price of kosher meat
went up. The wholesalers raised the price, and the retail
butchers tried to um Big boycotted. They tried to get
(02:33):
the whole salers to back down because they knew their
customers couldn't afford that steep rent. That's the that's the
price increase, UM. But the wholesalers didn't back down, and
the retailers many ways really had no choice but to
start selling the meat again because they were in a
vulnerable position. They had to pay rent for their spaces,
they had to you know, keep their businesses going. So
(02:56):
they opened up. But the women of the neighborhood UM,
they organized and they started boycott. And so the women
in the neighborhood are able to effectively, you know, give speeches,
rally everyone basically to stop buying meat. They get the
attention of newspaper reporters, both the Yiddish reporters and the
reporters uptown, and so they carry out this really intense,
(03:19):
really powerful consumer protests and consumer strike and sometimes at
some point in in UM the protests became violent. And
we know that in May of nine two May seventeen,
nineteen two UM, someone attacked the List Garden shop because
we have a picture of orchard with the window broken, UM.
(03:42):
And so I think about what it was like for
Goldie Liftgarden two in some ways really understand why the
women were striking because she herself was a woman who
had to manage the funds and provide for her kids.
And she probably really understood the vision that the Hall
of Lives were in and protesting that rent increase and
I'm sorry and then that price increase, but she was
(04:03):
torn because she had to run her store. So I
I just think that she must have been a really
um interesting woman and that she had to deal with
a lot of complicated um subjects. And really she stands
in for all of these immigrant women who were raising children,
but they were also business people, whether they were running
their own shops or simply managing a family household meant
(04:25):
that you had to be business minded because a lot
of these women, in order to afford the rent for
the apartments um needed to act as many landladies in
the sense that they found borders who would rent a
space within the apartment and pay the house life as
the kind of the sub land lady of the apartment.
So everyone took on borders and able to make rent.
(04:47):
So the housewives were not only taking care of the borders,
they were taking care of their children. And then Goldie
lust Gardens on top of that is taking care of
the store. And then she has to kind of deal
with this political protests. So she's kind of my here
out in the sense of thinking about someone who's able
to deal with a lot of um stress. That's such
an amazing story. She could be a whole episode of
(05:08):
Ours on her own, it could, you know, and then
the story to kind of and I we don't know
too much about this, but um, we always like to
find out what we can about the descendants and um.
Goldie lust Garden's oldest daughter, her name was Fannie, and
she got married and she and her husband and Mr. Gribard,
(05:31):
ran a restaurant for many years on the Lower East Side.
They had several children, one of whom was a daughter
named Blossom, and Blossom grew up to become a lawyer,
and she worked for city government and in the fifties
and sixties. So it's kind of amazing to think, like
a strong woman in nineteen hundred is a housewife and
(05:52):
maybe running a store, but by within two generations a lawyer.
And I think that tells the story of American opportunity
me um, and what American education can do. I love it.
I love it, um, but do I love it. I
get so excited about those stories. Those are the kind
of stories that Tracy and I both just really glom
(06:12):
onto when we're doing research. So I understand your enthusiasm completely. Yeah,
and it gives and it's kind of fun to me
in some ways that question what's my favorite story? Sometimes
my favorite stories are the ones that we find out
about but we haven't yet been able to interpret. Because
seven thousand people lived at ninety seven Orchard, but we
can't tell all of their stories right. So it's a
(06:32):
careful decision process is made about which story to tell
at what time. We want to make sure we're representing
different immigrant waves and um, different kinds of stories emerged.
We want to be able to tell stories that represent
the range of occupations. You know, all sorts of considerations
go into selecting a family apartment to interpret. But we
came across recently UM a newspaper article from nineteen ten
(06:56):
that describes a baker who lived at ninety seven Orchard
who was so distraught over his unemployment um and that
he jumped out the window and committed suicide. Now that
story would be a really hard story to tell for
a number of reasons, but I think it's an important
story because it speaks to the levels of stress that
these immigrants endured. And of course the headline of that
(07:19):
story was life sails to stop husband's you know, jumped
to death because the wife had come in and tried
to stop him from he had like a knife and
she tried she pulled the knife away from him, and
then he ran to the window and jumped out the window.
But what that woman then had to deal with after
losing her husband, losing for you know, potential source of income,
and then you know, even if she had to see
that newspaper headline that say she was the one that
(07:41):
present prevented him from from the suicide. Yeah, that's what
I mean, those sorts of discoveries. I'm sure like that
you have that combination of this is so cool but
also really tragic, but also really cool but also really tragic,
right right eight I mean, and then we also try
(08:01):
to as much as possible link our stories to contemporary issues.
So the Baldiezie family, Um came to America in the
nineteen twenties. Um Delpho came in worked as a carpenter,
and then he sent for his life Rosaria and she
comes over. But yet there's no documentation for her because
(08:24):
by the time he sends for her, those laws have
been passed the National Origins Act. I'm sorry that the
Johnson Read Act makes it really difficult for Italians to
get in. But yet we know she gets here, even
though there's no record for her in Alice Island. We
know she gets here because they have children um in
ninety eight and a year later, and so um Rosaria
(08:44):
we can tell undocumented immigrants. And so it's interesting to
kind of tell that story and be in the home
of the Baldiezies Um and then have visitors kind of
bring up their questions about the topic today. So we
don't want to preserve history just to kind of lock
it away in a box, or to think about our
building as a kind of dollhouse that's quaint and nice
(09:06):
to look at. Rather, we want, um, you know, the
richness of the layers within our building to be paired
with really intricate, thought provoking stories based on primary sources
UM and told through UM, engaging stories that really get
visitors to make connections between their own lives and the stories,
and between past and present. That might be the answer
(09:29):
to the next questions I was going to ask you,
which is since you run programs and education, like, what
is the most important takeaway for visitors for you? Like
what is your priority and goal for your education and
tour programs. I think there are a couple of goals, right,
I mean, I think we want first of all, we
want people to engage with history. We want people to
(09:52):
be exposed to the richness of the details and history.
We want people to hold primary sources in their hands
and trying to analyze them and to let them know
that they too are historians, right that with the proper documents,
with the proper information, with you know, knowing what other
historians have said about general trends, we all are able
(10:12):
to interpret and analyze history. So history is not just
um something historians should do. It's something that we all
can engage with. So that's one thing I would think.
Another thing is to really think about the idea of
maybe applied history. Once we know this history, what do
we do with it? And it's not up for the
museum to say, now that you know this history, you
should vote this way or do this thing. But now
(10:35):
you know the story, you know that there are many
sides to a story. You know that stories are complicated
and apply that way of thinking to everything that you
engage with in in society. So kind of teaching people
to look at things from a variety of perspectives is
I think another goal. UM. I think you know another
thing that we don't. It's hard to describe, but our
(10:56):
museum is very unique because rather than have pep will
walk around on their own, we have them take tours
with others. They're they're led by educators, and I think
that's one of the most you know, in addition to
the building, it's the educators that are our most valued
um asset at the museum because our educators are the
ones that bring the story to life, but our educators
(11:17):
are also the ones that help people forge connections to
one another. So the tours are like a community. You know,
all of a sudden you have to like be in
a group with fourteen other strangers, UM, and you're going
to learn history together. And how how often are adults
put into positions where they're with other strangers and they're
going to learn together. And I think there's something really
valuable about that you can't really plan it, UM. And
(11:40):
I think that's that kind of spontaneity and excitement. Also, UM,
is part of the tour. So I guess one of
the goals of our tours is to kind of think
of ourselves as members of a society and listen to
each other with respect and um learn and learn from
each other and the stories that we all have to
(12:00):
recognize that each individual has a story, which is kind
of a nice mirror of really what was probably going
on in the tenement building, like that people that did
not know each other were suddenly there together figuring things out,
absolutely right. So now, yeah, that's the great thing. We're
not going to make you move into the three hund
foot space with one another, and we're not going to
(12:21):
collect rent from you, but we're going to give you
the ability to like be in a room with a
bunch of strangers that maybe came from different parts of
the world, just like you know, people living in the
tournament would have been exposed to people of different cultures.
That's going to also happen on the floor. That's a
really good point. What sorts of ongoing research projects is
(12:51):
the museum involved in. I know you're constantly researching the
people that lived there, uh and sort of those stories,
but what else do you guys branch out into So yeah,
So you know, we've been talking a lot about ninety
seven Orchard, but ninety seven Orchard is only one venue
in a way, for the for the stories that we tell,
we now offer five walking tour, So we not only
(13:14):
research our building, but we research different sites in the neighborhood,
and we tell UM an array of stories based on
the built environment that surrounds us the Lower east Side.
So there's a way in which you could say the
Lower east Side is our is our playground as well
at least our interpretive space UM. And so we have
UM and I think one of the best ways to
experience the museum is to go on a building tour
(13:36):
and then go on a walking tour, so that you're
able to kind of put those two things together. Because
even the people who lived in the tenements in nineteen hundred,
or in nineteen twenty or in eighteen eighty, none of
those people would have spent their whole life in the
in the tenement, right, especially when it's so crowded, you're
gonna want to get outside. So our walking tours UM
give us the opportunity to kind of trace the steps
(13:57):
of some of the people who might have lived in
ninety seven Orchard to see the civic societies or the
newspaper buildings, or the synagogues or the churches, or the
schools or the movie theaters that they would have spent
time in as well. And UM. One of the nice
things about the Lower east Side that you ours is
not the only historic building. There are many historic buildings
on the Lower east Side and you can get a
sense of the street scape. UM and so you can
(14:18):
kind of use the Lower east Side to imagine the past.
But at the same time, and this really kind of
builds into our mission of connecting past to present. We
can tell stories of UM contemporary immigrants who are in
the neighborhood today, UM and contemporary shop keepers who are
in the neighborhood today. So it becomes a really dynamic
experience when you're walking through the neighborhood and you learn
(14:41):
about the past, but you're also observing the present. And
I would say the last them in another frontier of
our research is that we are going to be interpreting
UM one oh three Orchard, which is a building UM
the Museum owns on the corner of Orchard in Deoliancy
and it's UM been serving as our shop and it's
been serving as a place for classrooms where fifty school
(15:03):
children aren't able to learn UM. But we are now
doing research on the third floor of that building UM,
and we're researching stories of people who lived in that
building UM post World War two years. So, you know,
seven Orchard, we can only tell the stories of families
who lived there UM before five, because after nineteen thirty
(15:25):
five no families lived there, although there were stores. But
the story of family, immigrant and migrant life picks up
right at one three Orchard. And that's what we're trying
to do, is extend our narrative to be able to
tell the story as we move into more you know,
more recent decades. We're also able to diversify the stories
that we tell. So we're able to tell the story
(15:45):
of a family UM who survived the Holocaust and came
here to start a new life. We're able to tell
the story of Puerto Rican migrants UM, and also the
story of Chinese immigrants who came after nineteen sixty five.
After the quota laws from the nineteen needs we're taken
away and UM America again became a much more welcoming place.
(16:07):
You have a lot on your plate. I know I'm
getting stressed talking to you, but it's so like to
go back to my desk, but it's so exciting, Like
I I love the idea of seeing like the post
World War two stuff develop and where that's going to go.
Do you have any other exciting future plans or does
that that's plenty to talk about our Well, you know
(16:28):
one other thing I wanted to talk about, just to
give a little bit like a little bit more kind
of like an angle on how people experience the museum.
One of the I think in New York today of
the population is immigrants, and if you include immigrants and children,
you get closer to So we're really aware, especially the
work that we do with our school children, that immigration
(16:50):
is a story that is really important now. And UM
we have a program that we're working on with UM
school children where they tell us their immigrants story as well,
and we're creating a website in a virtual tour of
all of these objects, so the students come, they experienced
the museums through the tours. We then send educators back
(17:11):
into their classrooms and we review how they learned about
immigrant history through objects of the family, and then we
transition into the students sharing objects are trying to brainstorm
objects that tell their own family histories UM and so
kids come up with the most exciting and unusual things.
Last year in a school in Brooklyn, you know, one
(17:33):
classroom had students from UM, Barbados and Malaysia and China
and Russia and Poland, UM and Bangladesh and Pakistan and
as well as UM students who are the descendants of Irish,
Italian and Jewish immigrants. And they come up with an
array of objects, including, you know, an Ecuadorian sheep whistle
(17:53):
that was used to call feet together from the girl's
father had done this. A Polish girl brought in an
easter basket that that she had brought over I think
as wow. UM. A teacher brought a teacup that his
UM grandmother had brought over from Italy. UM people brought
in lockets, people brought in picked her Someone brought in
an airplane ticket because that immigration story was so recent
(18:16):
that that ticket told their story. People also brought in recipes,
UM recipes for sweet potato pie from North Carolina to
include the migration story. UM people brought in prayer mats,
so Muslim prayer mats that were that are used for
prayer or five times a day, and the boy said
that when they use it, they can sometimes smell the
grandparents that had used it before coming from Banglades. So
(18:40):
really like tactile um OECTs an array of them and
it's fascinating because you start to see these individual stories
that the students have, but when you put them all together,
you kind of see that no matter where people came
from or what time period they arrived, that there's a
lot of commonality in themigrant experience because a lot of
(19:01):
it is dealing with, you know, adapting to America, thinking
about how to preserve traditions, thinking about how to become American. Um.
So this project is really really fun and so we'll
be able to exhibit it on our website. We're calling
it Your Story, Our Stories. I love that whole idea
because one of the things that's important to me is
we're all making history all the time, right And I
(19:22):
feel like this this project and it's time consuming, and
you know, it takes a lot of like you know,
multi sessions, and that I mean the children have this
time to develop their story, they're able to write about it,
so it meets curriculum needs, they're able to upload it,
they're able to take a photo of it, and they
kind of become historians UM. And then we have on
(19:43):
an exhibit at the end where the students are able
to exhibit their work and their parents come and then
their parents are able to see their story as part
of an American curriculum. That's so cool. If we have
(20:06):
a free program. We have a free program at night
called Tenement Talks, and a Tenement Talks were able to
take a lot of the issues that come up in
the Tenement during the day with our visitors and explore
them in more detail. So we have tonight, for example,
what we have UM people talking about immigrants, food ways,
we have people talking about New York architecture. We have
(20:27):
UM authors talking about their new books. So this is
UM Tenement Talks and the public program absolutely free, and
we invite you to check us out, all of you
New Yorkers, and for those of you who aren't in
New York. UM the recordings of the UM of the
Tenement Talks are also online on our website. And I
come UM and come to those and I think there's
(20:49):
been a have there been more than one about food
because that's in my wheelhouse for sure. Yeah, you know
what we have. We just finalized one for the season.
We've done ones on food. UM. My favorite one was
we did there was a Yiddish cookbook author um, and
we looked at her cookbook and then from nineteen o
one and it was we cooked some of the recipes
(21:11):
from that as well. But there's one coming up this
season on June three, in which we have a cookbook
that's been newly translated from the Yiddish. It's the Vilna
Vegetarian Cookbook written in ninety eight UM. And the recipes
are astounding because it's being you know, this one was
using like silariac and she was using on Jerusalem artichokes
(21:33):
in her food. And so we're gonna discuss. We're going
to discuss and explore the history with the woman who
translated the book. But then we also have Amanda Cohen
who's the owner of Dirt Candy, which is this amazing
vegetarian restaurant on the Lower East Side. So we'll be
looking at vegetarian food, the women who cook it and
the women who write about it. Um, all together, past
(21:55):
and present. I love it. We have lots of listeners
that love our food episodes, so I knew they will
be interested in that, and we have. We have Jennifer
eight Lee and her new documentary, and Jennifer and her
new documentary and I'm general Too's chicken on April one,
So that's another great food story. I think I have
(22:15):
heard her speak about that. She did a Ted talk
about it, didn't she Yes, she's great, It's excellent. It's
so good if you're into again food at all. It's
just fascinating on the history of how that came to be.
So I'm sure that is going to be an awesome
uh little uh my brain just exploded. I literally got
so excited thinking about chicken. Uh. So that's gonna be
(22:41):
an awesome and delectable little bit of info. I'm sure.
And I know that you kind of think in these terms,
um all the time. I read an interesting article that
you wrote for Huffington Post last year about what a
tenement museum that opened in four would look like and
how it would reflect today's immigration, which is a great read.
I recommend it to all of our listeners if they're
(23:03):
even marginally interested in this. It's a really good way
to kind of look at it and contextualized. Like I said,
we are making history all the time, every day. Um Annie,
this is such a delight. Thank you so much for
sharing all of your information with us. You're like an encyclopio.
Oh I loved it, UM. And I know the Tenement
(23:25):
Museum website, which we will link to in our show notes,
has no joke. I'm not exaggerating when I say a
wealth of information. You guys have so much educational material there.
There is a podcast there that people can listen to
if they want to. Uh, where can they find you online?
What are great ways to kind of contact the Tenement
(23:46):
Museum and you if you want that, uh and kind
of so UM. Our website is www Tenament dot org. UM.
And what you also should do with stay tuned for
late we'll be putting up a virtual tour and that
your story our stories UM exhibit will be online as well,
(24:06):
so keep checking back. But our website is a great
place UM to find information. And I think the best
way to experience the tournament is to come visit us.
If you want to contact me, UM, my email is
a pollend at Tenement dot org. And we're interested in
your immigration and migration stories as well or not just
collecting the stories of the students. They want to hear
(24:28):
your stories too, so you can be in. If you
have a story you'd like to contribute, UM, you can
email me that as well. Fantastic UM. Again, thank you
so much for spending time with us today. And like
I said, you're a busy woman. You've got a lot
going on, so I really appreciate you. So I I
(24:55):
think I was out of the office when you did this,
uh interview. Yeah, I got to listen to it with
totally fresh ears as though I were a podcast listener,
and I really really enjoyed it, and I hope everyone
else did also. Annie's amazing. She just she's such a
wealth of information and because history is her background, like
(25:15):
you can just hear the passion of of sort of
all of their projects when she speaks. I really had
a great time talking to her. And now I have
some listener mail. This is from our listener Amber and
it is about our Leo Bakeland episode. She says, recently,
I was listening to your podcast about the father of plastics.
Fascinating fellow. I think I would have liked to have
(25:35):
met him me too. Uh. And finally, I had something
worth your time. She's earlier in the email, she mentioned
she had yet to find the perfect thing to write
to us about. She said, I am enclosed a picture
of something which I inherited, my great grandmother's nineteen fifties
bake light radio. It's fully restored and in perfect working order.
The gentleman who did the restoration said it was quite
rare to find a colored piece and to be very
(25:57):
careful when cleaning it. When I first received it, I
was rather nonplussed, But now it is one of my
most cherished possessions. Having an understanding of the historical importance
and having it in working order has changed it in
my mind from an ugly pink radio to an amazing
bit of technology that cannot be replaced. I hope this
reaches you. Well, uh, that's such a cool thing. She
(26:18):
sent us this picture, and it's a lovely little kind
of pale pink radio. It is very exactly what you
think of when you think of nineteen fifties styling. And
I'm so sort of blown away that it's working and
she's had it, you know, looked at, and that it's
it's uh not just a perfectly preserved piece of history,
but a perfectly preserved and working piece of history. I
love it. If you would like to write to us
(26:40):
and share your historical connections, either through your magical bag
light collection or anything else you'd like to talk about,
you can do that at History Podcast at household works
dot com. You can also find us on Twitter at
missed in History, at Facebook dot com, slash missed in History,
at missed in History dot tumbler dot com, and at
pinterest com slash missed in History. We are also at
(27:02):
missed in History dot spreadshirt dot com if you would
like to purchase your very own missed in History goodies.
If you want to do some additional investigating about the
Tenement Museum, you can find them I began he mentioned
at the end of that interview, but we'll do it
again at www dot tenement dot org and on Twitter
at Tenement Museum. UH. If you would like to do
(27:24):
a little bit of research about related topics, you can
go to our parents site, how stuff Works. Type in
the word landlords in the search bar and you will
get an article how landlords Work. If you would like
to visit us on the web, that address is missed
in History dot com and we have an archive of
all of our episodes, show notes for all of the
episodes since Tracy and I have joined the podcast, as
(27:44):
well as once in a while we'll post a little
something as a blog and if you would like to
visit us, we highly encourage you to do so. So
those addresses again are missed in history dot com and
how Stuff Works dot com for more onness and thousands
of other topics. Because it has to have works dot
(28:05):
com
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And in our previous episode,
we shared the first part of our interview with Dr
Annie Pollen, who is Senior director of Education and Programs
(00:23):
at the Tenement Museum on New York's Lower east Side.
And Annie told us in that first episode about the
discovery of the building that would eventually house the museum
and the neighborhood there on the Lower east Side as
it developed from the eighteen sixties to the nineteen thirties. Today,
we're gonna learn some more about the ongoing research that's
happening at the museum, along with programs and plans for
(00:44):
the museum. We're also going to talk a little bit
about one of our favorite topics, which is food as
it relates to telling the story of immigration in New York. Yeah,
there's some really fun stuff coming up. Do you have
a favorite story or stories of some of the residents
(01:05):
that lived at ninety seven Orchard. That is such a
hard question because I think for all the family, you know,
every family is fascinating, you know, it's kind of like
picking who's your favorite child if you had like seven
children and had to pick one who was the most interesting.
So well, you know, the one of the woman who
(01:27):
fascinates me the most is a woman named Goldy lust
Garden and she and her husband Um ran a kosher
butcher shop at Orchard from approximately eighteen nine to nineteen
o two. Um she was the mother of six children.
She raised her children in an apartment right behind the
(01:50):
butcher store. She probably worked six days a week alongside
her husband. In fact, we have a picture of the
Lustgarden family UM standing outside of their shop, and all
of them, every one of them, I believe, is wearing
an apron, including their little five year old son William.
So this was a family that worked together. And Um,
(02:11):
I'm always fascinated by her thinking about how she'd be
raising her family while also helping to run a business.
And the story becomes even more complicated because Um, in
May of nineteen o two, the price of kosher meat
went up. The wholesalers raised the price, and the retail
butchers tried to um Big boycotted. They tried to get
(02:33):
the whole salers to back down because they knew their
customers couldn't afford that steep rent. That's the that's the
price increase, UM. But the wholesalers didn't back down, and
the retailers many ways really had no choice but to
start selling the meat again because they were in a
vulnerable position. They had to pay rent for their spaces,
they had to you know, keep their businesses going. So
(02:56):
they opened up. But the women of the neighborhood UM,
they organized and they started boycott. And so the women
in the neighborhood are able to effectively, you know, give speeches,
rally everyone basically to stop buying meat. They get the
attention of newspaper reporters, both the Yiddish reporters and the
reporters uptown, and so they carry out this really intense,
(03:19):
really powerful consumer protests and consumer strike and sometimes at
some point in in UM the protests became violent. And
we know that in May of nine two May seventeen,
nineteen two UM, someone attacked the List Garden shop because
we have a picture of orchard with the window broken, UM.
(03:42):
And so I think about what it was like for
Goldie Liftgarden two in some ways really understand why the
women were striking because she herself was a woman who
had to manage the funds and provide for her kids.
And she probably really understood the vision that the Hall
of Lives were in and protesting that rent increase and
I'm sorry and then that price increase, but she was
(04:03):
torn because she had to run her store. So I
I just think that she must have been a really
um interesting woman and that she had to deal with
a lot of complicated um subjects. And really she stands
in for all of these immigrant women who were raising children,
but they were also business people, whether they were running
their own shops or simply managing a family household meant
(04:25):
that you had to be business minded because a lot
of these women, in order to afford the rent for
the apartments um needed to act as many landladies in
the sense that they found borders who would rent a
space within the apartment and pay the house life as
the kind of the sub land lady of the apartment.
So everyone took on borders and able to make rent.
(04:47):
So the housewives were not only taking care of the borders,
they were taking care of their children. And then Goldie
lust Gardens on top of that is taking care of
the store. And then she has to kind of deal
with this political protests. So she's kind of my here
out in the sense of thinking about someone who's able
to deal with a lot of um stress. That's such
an amazing story. She could be a whole episode of
(05:08):
Ours on her own, it could, you know, and then
the story to kind of and I we don't know
too much about this, but um, we always like to
find out what we can about the descendants and um.
Goldie lust Garden's oldest daughter, her name was Fannie, and
she got married and she and her husband and Mr. Gribard,
(05:31):
ran a restaurant for many years on the Lower East Side.
They had several children, one of whom was a daughter
named Blossom, and Blossom grew up to become a lawyer,
and she worked for city government and in the fifties
and sixties. So it's kind of amazing to think, like
a strong woman in nineteen hundred is a housewife and
(05:52):
maybe running a store, but by within two generations a lawyer.
And I think that tells the story of American opportunity
me um, and what American education can do. I love it.
I love it, um, but do I love it. I
get so excited about those stories. Those are the kind
of stories that Tracy and I both just really glom
(06:12):
onto when we're doing research. So I understand your enthusiasm completely. Yeah,
and it gives and it's kind of fun to me
in some ways that question what's my favorite story? Sometimes
my favorite stories are the ones that we find out
about but we haven't yet been able to interpret. Because
seven thousand people lived at ninety seven Orchard, but we
can't tell all of their stories right. So it's a
(06:32):
careful decision process is made about which story to tell
at what time. We want to make sure we're representing
different immigrant waves and um, different kinds of stories emerged.
We want to be able to tell stories that represent
the range of occupations. You know, all sorts of considerations
go into selecting a family apartment to interpret. But we
came across recently UM a newspaper article from nineteen ten
(06:56):
that describes a baker who lived at ninety seven Orchard
who was so distraught over his unemployment um and that
he jumped out the window and committed suicide. Now that
story would be a really hard story to tell for
a number of reasons, but I think it's an important
story because it speaks to the levels of stress that
these immigrants endured. And of course the headline of that
(07:19):
story was life sails to stop husband's you know, jumped
to death because the wife had come in and tried
to stop him from he had like a knife and
she tried she pulled the knife away from him, and
then he ran to the window and jumped out the window.
But what that woman then had to deal with after
losing her husband, losing for you know, potential source of income,
and then you know, even if she had to see
that newspaper headline that say she was the one that
(07:41):
present prevented him from from the suicide. Yeah, that's what
I mean, those sorts of discoveries. I'm sure like that
you have that combination of this is so cool but
also really tragic, but also really cool but also really tragic,
right right eight I mean, and then we also try
(08:01):
to as much as possible link our stories to contemporary issues.
So the Baldiezie family, Um came to America in the
nineteen twenties. Um Delpho came in worked as a carpenter,
and then he sent for his life Rosaria and she
comes over. But yet there's no documentation for her because
(08:24):
by the time he sends for her, those laws have
been passed the National Origins Act. I'm sorry that the
Johnson Read Act makes it really difficult for Italians to
get in. But yet we know she gets here, even
though there's no record for her in Alice Island. We
know she gets here because they have children um in
ninety eight and a year later, and so um Rosaria
(08:44):
we can tell undocumented immigrants. And so it's interesting to
kind of tell that story and be in the home
of the Baldiezies Um and then have visitors kind of
bring up their questions about the topic today. So we
don't want to preserve history just to kind of lock
it away in a box, or to think about our
building as a kind of dollhouse that's quaint and nice
(09:06):
to look at. Rather, we want, um, you know, the
richness of the layers within our building to be paired
with really intricate, thought provoking stories based on primary sources
UM and told through UM, engaging stories that really get
visitors to make connections between their own lives and the stories,
and between past and present. That might be the answer
(09:29):
to the next questions I was going to ask you,
which is since you run programs and education, like, what
is the most important takeaway for visitors for you? Like
what is your priority and goal for your education and
tour programs. I think there are a couple of goals, right,
I mean, I think we want first of all, we
want people to engage with history. We want people to
(09:52):
be exposed to the richness of the details and history.
We want people to hold primary sources in their hands
and trying to analyze them and to let them know
that they too are historians, right that with the proper documents,
with the proper information, with you know, knowing what other
historians have said about general trends, we all are able
(10:12):
to interpret and analyze history. So history is not just
um something historians should do. It's something that we all
can engage with. So that's one thing I would think.
Another thing is to really think about the idea of
maybe applied history. Once we know this history, what do
we do with it? And it's not up for the
museum to say, now that you know this history, you
should vote this way or do this thing. But now
(10:35):
you know the story, you know that there are many
sides to a story. You know that stories are complicated
and apply that way of thinking to everything that you
engage with in in society. So kind of teaching people
to look at things from a variety of perspectives is
I think another goal. UM. I think you know another
thing that we don't. It's hard to describe, but our
(10:56):
museum is very unique because rather than have pep will
walk around on their own, we have them take tours
with others. They're they're led by educators, and I think
that's one of the most you know, in addition to
the building, it's the educators that are our most valued
um asset at the museum because our educators are the
ones that bring the story to life, but our educators
(11:17):
are also the ones that help people forge connections to
one another. So the tours are like a community. You know,
all of a sudden you have to like be in
a group with fourteen other strangers, UM, and you're going
to learn history together. And how how often are adults
put into positions where they're with other strangers and they're
going to learn together. And I think there's something really
valuable about that you can't really plan it, UM. And
(11:40):
I think that's that kind of spontaneity and excitement. Also, UM,
is part of the tour. So I guess one of
the goals of our tours is to kind of think
of ourselves as members of a society and listen to
each other with respect and um learn and learn from
each other and the stories that we all have to
(12:00):
recognize that each individual has a story, which is kind
of a nice mirror of really what was probably going
on in the tenement building, like that people that did
not know each other were suddenly there together figuring things out,
absolutely right. So now, yeah, that's the great thing. We're
not going to make you move into the three hund
foot space with one another, and we're not going to
(12:21):
collect rent from you, but we're going to give you
the ability to like be in a room with a
bunch of strangers that maybe came from different parts of
the world, just like you know, people living in the
tournament would have been exposed to people of different cultures.
That's going to also happen on the floor. That's a
really good point. What sorts of ongoing research projects is
(12:51):
the museum involved in. I know you're constantly researching the
people that lived there, uh and sort of those stories,
but what else do you guys branch out into So yeah,
So you know, we've been talking a lot about ninety
seven Orchard, but ninety seven Orchard is only one venue
in a way, for the for the stories that we tell,
we now offer five walking tour, So we not only
(13:14):
research our building, but we research different sites in the neighborhood,
and we tell UM an array of stories based on
the built environment that surrounds us the Lower east Side.
So there's a way in which you could say the
Lower east Side is our is our playground as well
at least our interpretive space UM. And so we have
UM and I think one of the best ways to
experience the museum is to go on a building tour
(13:36):
and then go on a walking tour, so that you're
able to kind of put those two things together. Because
even the people who lived in the tenements in nineteen hundred,
or in nineteen twenty or in eighteen eighty, none of
those people would have spent their whole life in the
in the tenement, right, especially when it's so crowded, you're
gonna want to get outside. So our walking tours UM
give us the opportunity to kind of trace the steps
(13:57):
of some of the people who might have lived in
ninety seven Orchard to see the civic societies or the
newspaper buildings, or the synagogues or the churches, or the
schools or the movie theaters that they would have spent
time in as well. And UM. One of the nice
things about the Lower east Side that you ours is
not the only historic building. There are many historic buildings
on the Lower east Side and you can get a
sense of the street scape. UM and so you can
(14:18):
kind of use the Lower east Side to imagine the past.
But at the same time, and this really kind of
builds into our mission of connecting past to present. We
can tell stories of UM contemporary immigrants who are in
the neighborhood today, UM and contemporary shop keepers who are
in the neighborhood today. So it becomes a really dynamic
experience when you're walking through the neighborhood and you learn
(14:41):
about the past, but you're also observing the present. And
I would say the last them in another frontier of
our research is that we are going to be interpreting
UM one oh three Orchard, which is a building UM
the Museum owns on the corner of Orchard in Deoliancy
and it's UM been serving as our shop and it's
been serving as a place for classrooms where fifty school
(15:03):
children aren't able to learn UM. But we are now
doing research on the third floor of that building UM,
and we're researching stories of people who lived in that
building UM post World War two years. So, you know,
seven Orchard, we can only tell the stories of families
who lived there UM before five, because after nineteen thirty
(15:25):
five no families lived there, although there were stores. But
the story of family, immigrant and migrant life picks up
right at one three Orchard. And that's what we're trying
to do, is extend our narrative to be able to
tell the story as we move into more you know,
more recent decades. We're also able to diversify the stories
that we tell. So we're able to tell the story
(15:45):
of a family UM who survived the Holocaust and came
here to start a new life. We're able to tell
the story of Puerto Rican migrants UM, and also the
story of Chinese immigrants who came after nineteen sixty five.
After the quota laws from the nineteen needs we're taken
away and UM America again became a much more welcoming place.
(16:07):
You have a lot on your plate. I know I'm
getting stressed talking to you, but it's so like to
go back to my desk, but it's so exciting, Like
I I love the idea of seeing like the post
World War two stuff develop and where that's going to go.
Do you have any other exciting future plans or does
that that's plenty to talk about our Well, you know
(16:28):
one other thing I wanted to talk about, just to
give a little bit like a little bit more kind
of like an angle on how people experience the museum.
One of the I think in New York today of
the population is immigrants, and if you include immigrants and children,
you get closer to So we're really aware, especially the
work that we do with our school children, that immigration
(16:50):
is a story that is really important now. And UM
we have a program that we're working on with UM
school children where they tell us their immigrants story as well,
and we're creating a website in a virtual tour of
all of these objects, so the students come, they experienced
the museums through the tours. We then send educators back
(17:11):
into their classrooms and we review how they learned about
immigrant history through objects of the family, and then we
transition into the students sharing objects are trying to brainstorm
objects that tell their own family histories UM and so
kids come up with the most exciting and unusual things.
Last year in a school in Brooklyn, you know, one
(17:33):
classroom had students from UM, Barbados and Malaysia and China
and Russia and Poland, UM and Bangladesh and Pakistan and
as well as UM students who are the descendants of Irish,
Italian and Jewish immigrants. And they come up with an
array of objects, including, you know, an Ecuadorian sheep whistle
(17:53):
that was used to call feet together from the girl's
father had done this. A Polish girl brought in an
easter basket that that she had brought over I think
as wow. UM. A teacher brought a teacup that his
UM grandmother had brought over from Italy. UM people brought
in lockets, people brought in picked her Someone brought in
an airplane ticket because that immigration story was so recent
(18:16):
that that ticket told their story. People also brought in recipes,
UM recipes for sweet potato pie from North Carolina to
include the migration story. UM people brought in prayer mats,
so Muslim prayer mats that were that are used for
prayer or five times a day, and the boy said
that when they use it, they can sometimes smell the
grandparents that had used it before coming from Banglades. So
(18:40):
really like tactile um OECTs an array of them and
it's fascinating because you start to see these individual stories
that the students have, but when you put them all together,
you kind of see that no matter where people came
from or what time period they arrived, that there's a
lot of commonality in themigrant experience because a lot of
(19:01):
it is dealing with, you know, adapting to America, thinking
about how to preserve traditions, thinking about how to become American. Um.
So this project is really really fun and so we'll
be able to exhibit it on our website. We're calling
it Your Story, Our Stories. I love that whole idea
because one of the things that's important to me is
we're all making history all the time, right And I
(19:22):
feel like this this project and it's time consuming, and
you know, it takes a lot of like you know,
multi sessions, and that I mean the children have this
time to develop their story, they're able to write about it,
so it meets curriculum needs, they're able to upload it,
they're able to take a photo of it, and they
kind of become historians UM. And then we have on
(19:43):
an exhibit at the end where the students are able
to exhibit their work and their parents come and then
their parents are able to see their story as part
of an American curriculum. That's so cool. If we have
(20:06):
a free program. We have a free program at night
called Tenement Talks, and a Tenement Talks were able to
take a lot of the issues that come up in
the Tenement during the day with our visitors and explore
them in more detail. So we have tonight, for example,
what we have UM people talking about immigrants, food ways,
we have people talking about New York architecture. We have
(20:27):
UM authors talking about their new books. So this is
UM Tenement Talks and the public program absolutely free, and
we invite you to check us out, all of you
New Yorkers, and for those of you who aren't in
New York. UM the recordings of the UM of the
Tenement Talks are also online on our website. And I
come UM and come to those and I think there's
(20:49):
been a have there been more than one about food
because that's in my wheelhouse for sure. Yeah, you know
what we have. We just finalized one for the season.
We've done ones on food. UM. My favorite one was
we did there was a Yiddish cookbook author um, and
we looked at her cookbook and then from nineteen o
one and it was we cooked some of the recipes
(21:11):
from that as well. But there's one coming up this
season on June three, in which we have a cookbook
that's been newly translated from the Yiddish. It's the Vilna
Vegetarian Cookbook written in ninety eight UM. And the recipes
are astounding because it's being you know, this one was
using like silariac and she was using on Jerusalem artichokes
(21:33):
in her food. And so we're gonna discuss. We're going
to discuss and explore the history with the woman who
translated the book. But then we also have Amanda Cohen
who's the owner of Dirt Candy, which is this amazing
vegetarian restaurant on the Lower East Side. So we'll be
looking at vegetarian food, the women who cook it and
the women who write about it. Um, all together, past
(21:55):
and present. I love it. We have lots of listeners
that love our food episodes, so I knew they will
be interested in that, and we have. We have Jennifer
eight Lee and her new documentary, and Jennifer and her
new documentary and I'm general Too's chicken on April one,
So that's another great food story. I think I have
(22:15):
heard her speak about that. She did a Ted talk
about it, didn't she Yes, she's great, It's excellent. It's
so good if you're into again food at all. It's
just fascinating on the history of how that came to be.
So I'm sure that is going to be an awesome
uh little uh my brain just exploded. I literally got
so excited thinking about chicken. Uh. So that's gonna be
(22:41):
an awesome and delectable little bit of info. I'm sure.
And I know that you kind of think in these terms,
um all the time. I read an interesting article that
you wrote for Huffington Post last year about what a
tenement museum that opened in four would look like and
how it would reflect today's immigration, which is a great read.
I recommend it to all of our listeners if they're
(23:03):
even marginally interested in this. It's a really good way
to kind of look at it and contextualized. Like I said,
we are making history all the time, every day. Um Annie,
this is such a delight. Thank you so much for
sharing all of your information with us. You're like an encyclopio.
Oh I loved it, UM. And I know the Tenement
(23:25):
Museum website, which we will link to in our show notes,
has no joke. I'm not exaggerating when I say a
wealth of information. You guys have so much educational material there.
There is a podcast there that people can listen to
if they want to. Uh, where can they find you online?
What are great ways to kind of contact the Tenement
(23:46):
Museum and you if you want that, uh and kind
of so UM. Our website is www Tenament dot org. UM.
And what you also should do with stay tuned for
late we'll be putting up a virtual tour and that
your story our stories UM exhibit will be online as well,
(24:06):
so keep checking back. But our website is a great
place UM to find information. And I think the best
way to experience the tournament is to come visit us.
If you want to contact me, UM, my email is
a pollend at Tenement dot org. And we're interested in
your immigration and migration stories as well or not just
collecting the stories of the students. They want to hear
(24:28):
your stories too, so you can be in. If you
have a story you'd like to contribute, UM, you can
email me that as well. Fantastic UM. Again, thank you
so much for spending time with us today. And like
I said, you're a busy woman. You've got a lot
going on, so I really appreciate you. So I I
(24:55):
think I was out of the office when you did this,
uh interview. Yeah, I got to listen to it with
totally fresh ears as though I were a podcast listener,
and I really really enjoyed it, and I hope everyone
else did also. Annie's amazing. She just she's such a
wealth of information and because history is her background, like
(25:15):
you can just hear the passion of of sort of
all of their projects when she speaks. I really had
a great time talking to her. And now I have
some listener mail. This is from our listener Amber and
it is about our Leo Bakeland episode. She says, recently,
I was listening to your podcast about the father of plastics.
Fascinating fellow. I think I would have liked to have
(25:35):
met him me too. Uh. And finally, I had something
worth your time. She's earlier in the email, she mentioned
she had yet to find the perfect thing to write
to us about. She said, I am enclosed a picture
of something which I inherited, my great grandmother's nineteen fifties
bake light radio. It's fully restored and in perfect working order.
The gentleman who did the restoration said it was quite
rare to find a colored piece and to be very
(25:57):
careful when cleaning it. When I first received it, I
was rather nonplussed, But now it is one of my
most cherished possessions. Having an understanding of the historical importance
and having it in working order has changed it in
my mind from an ugly pink radio to an amazing
bit of technology that cannot be replaced. I hope this
reaches you. Well, uh, that's such a cool thing. She
(26:18):
sent us this picture, and it's a lovely little kind
of pale pink radio. It is very exactly what you
think of when you think of nineteen fifties styling. And
I'm so sort of blown away that it's working and
she's had it, you know, looked at, and that it's
it's uh not just a perfectly preserved piece of history,
but a perfectly preserved and working piece of history. I
love it. If you would like to write to us
(26:40):
and share your historical connections, either through your magical bag
light collection or anything else you'd like to talk about,
you can do that at History Podcast at household works
dot com. You can also find us on Twitter at
missed in History, at Facebook dot com, slash missed in History,
at missed in History dot tumbler dot com, and at
pinterest com slash missed in History. We are also at
(27:02):
missed in History dot spreadshirt dot com if you would
like to purchase your very own missed in History goodies.
If you want to do some additional investigating about the
Tenement Museum, you can find them I began he mentioned
at the end of that interview, but we'll do it
again at www dot tenement dot org and on Twitter
at Tenement Museum. UH. If you would like to do
(27:24):
a little bit of research about related topics, you can
go to our parents site, how stuff Works. Type in
the word landlords in the search bar and you will
get an article how landlords Work. If you would like
to visit us on the web, that address is missed
in History dot com and we have an archive of
all of our episodes, show notes for all of the
episodes since Tracy and I have joined the podcast, as
(27:44):
well as once in a while we'll post a little
something as a blog and if you would like to
visit us, we highly encourage you to do so. So
those addresses again are missed in history dot com and
how Stuff Works dot com for more onness and thousands
of other topics. Because it has to have works dot
(28:05):
com
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