Back to the Past in The Lower East Side Turn of the Century Tenement Pictures

January 18, 2015

Back to the Past in The Lower East Side Turn of the Century Tenement Pictures

adamfoxie* gives you this day an opportunity to go back to the past and see for yourself how the people in this tenement neighborhood lived at the turn of the century and before. The neighborhood touched both Chinatown and Little Italy. At this moment in time it is the Chinese community the ones that are taking over this building; Usually remodeling small apartments to rent at sky high rents. Before the Chinese it was the Puerto Ricans the inhabitants there. Cheap rents but they did not have the means to remodeled the insides, so the rents were low. (relatively speaking for manhattan).

In many cases you were lucky (like us) to find an apartment that was well kept, if you did it was because an elder couple or a single senior had lived there. In our case the auntie of my sister’s husband passed away. She was living with a grandson who did not want to lived there anymore alone. We took over a second floor walk up apartment. We were coming from Brooklyn which I could not hate more. Latter on we moved up another flight of stairs to take over a better on one (remodeled and kept better). That’s were I grew up watching the traffic on the Avenue and seeing part of the East River which now had been blocked by a 20 story high NYC project.

It’s amazing how the keepers of these properties have brought the pst back to us. I have gone inside and seen it. Hopefully this pictures will inspire to go there yourself and see it.