Lower East Side Tenement Museum Planning Expansion to Include Post-1940 History

The incredible Tenement Museum in Manhattan's Lower East Side is one of the best museums in the City, revealing to visitors exactly how people would live packed into tiny crowded apartments over 100 years ago.

A planned expansion by the museum will include more recent immigration waves including Puerto Rican, Dominican, Chinese and others, whereas the current building at 97 Orchard stops telling the story at 1940 when the building was closed off.

For more than 20 years the Tenement Museum has told the stories of immigrants who lived at 97 Orchard Street. While the building closed its doors to residents in 1935, the neighborhood continued to welcome newcomers in search of opportunity. In 2017, the Museum will open a new exhibit at 103 Orchard Street, in the same landmarked building that houses the Visitor Center and Museum Shop. The new exhibit tells the stories of immigrants who arrived after World War II up to today, and will feature a family of Holocaust survivors, Puerto Rican migrants, and Chinese residents. It is through these families' experiences that the Museum will continue the immigrant story past 1935, and provide visitors with the opportunity to incorporate their own family histories into the story of contemporary immigration.

Check out the museum site to learn more about the expansion.