Tenement Museum

Behind the brick façades of New York’s Lower East Side are the homes of families who helped shape the city. The Tenement Museum preserves historic apartment buildings at 97 and 103 Orchard Street, using recreated interiors and personal stories to explore how immigrants and migrants lived, worked and built new lives from the 19th century onward. Rather than presenting history through objects alone, the museum brings individual experiences to life through guided apartment tours and neighbourhood walks. The stories reveal the realities of crowded housing, changing communities and the search for belonging, connecting the lives of past residents with questions about migration and identity today.