Lower East Side Tenement Museum

This typical five-story brick tenement building, like many in the neighborhood, was home to approximately 7,000 working-class people, from more than 20 coun- tries, between 1863 and 1935. Unlike its renovated neighbors, however, 97 Orchard preserves and interprets the history of the city’s immigration through guided tours of apartments representing different time periods. Amid the dim lighting, recreated furnishings, and appropriately garbed actors playing former tenants, it’s not hard to imagine a bygone neighborhood and the lives of those who gave up everything to settle here.