Tenement museum

I visited the tenement museum and I got to participate in a tour of the preserved building. The guide of the tour brought us to two apartment buildings, and within each respective apartment she explained the life of the immigrant families that lived inside. She followed two families- one German (the Gumpertz) and one Italian (the Baldizzi). The apartments each contained three identical rooms, a central room which served as the kitchen, a smaller bedroom, and then a larger room which served as a dress making space for the Gumpertz and an additional bedroom or living space for the Baldizzis. Both the families had unique stories which corresponded to their apartments. First, we learned about the Gumpertz, which moved to the area because of the Jewish community. The father of the family abandoned his wife and kids so the mother of the household had to take on the added responsibility of working to pay rent as well as caring for the house and kids. Ultimately, when the father passed away, the Gumpertz family gained claim to a sizable inheritance so they were able to move out of the tenemant and move uptown. Next, the Baldizzis lived in the apartment decades later. The youngest daughter of the Baldizzis, a grandmother today, gave a recorded account of how she remembered the apartment when she was a child, which helped preserve the state of the apartment from the time. She remembered the minuscule details such as the placement of soap atop the sink and the bucket which she washed her body in. Her mother was very particular about hygiene and was the keeper for the house. In the museum we also saw the statements of the families and their occupations of the time. I enjoyed this museum because it was a preserved building from over a century ago, with real life stories to go along with the rooms that we visited. (picture is me walking with my group)