Tenement Museum To Stay Open Late Thursdays With New Exhibits

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — The Tenement Museum is inviting New Yorkers to explore the city's immigrant history late into the night on Thursdays with new exhibits and tours starting in October.

The three-extra hours of programming feature a new permanent tour that explores the history of health and disease in New York’s tenement life, a pop-up exhibit with relics excavated from the walls and floors of the museum's buildings and other existing programs such as a tour of the museum's German beer saloon with a pair of actors playing the pub's owners.

Visitors have until 8 p.m. to dive into the history of the immigrants who settled in and built lives in the Lower East Side. The after-hours programming will give museum-goers a glimpse into lesser known spaces and stories while giving busy New Yorkers ample time to stop by, said an official with the museum.

“We’re really excited to highlight tours that we don’t normally offer, so you’re getting to hear more specific stories and visit apartments that you wouldn’t typically get to see,” said Kathleen Fletcher, the senior associate for education and special events at the Tenement Museum.

“It’s a great opportunity to take in our spaces and by having it be later in the day New Yorkers who work still have a chance to come."

The new permanent tour embraces the museum's monthly theme of health and hygiene. Tilted "Life and Death at the Tenement," it includes the stories of Romanian immigrant Jacob Burinescu, who died during the 1918 influenza pandemic; German-born John and Caroline Schneider, who operated a mid-19th-century beer saloon while suffering from tuberculosis; and Jose Santiago “Benny” Beniquez and Crispin Ramos a Puerto Rican migrant couple who lived with HIV during the 1980s.

A pop-up exhibit showcases artifacts recovered during restoration work at the museum's Orchard Street tenements and offers a peak at the health, illnesses and everyday hygiene of those living in the neighborhood's tenements with items such as a tin for aspirin, medicine bottles and an array of historical photographs.

The mundane objects offer an unexpectedly enthralling look at the lives of those who lived in the tenements, said Fletcher

"I think what I’ve seen compelled people more than anything else is the wholly ordinary," she said. "We’re talking about these completely ordinary people, ordinary homes, and I think it’s really fascinating to see what people are using in their home and why we've returned to some of those things and not others."

Late Nights Thursday at the Tenement Museum kicks off Oct. 4 until 8 p.m.

Photos courtesy of the Tenement Museum