"Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last," White wrote. "It is this third city that accounts for New York¹s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements."

For many who settled in New York in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, home was something called a Otenement," Later euphemized with the word "apartment," the tenement is a building that houses three or more individual families.

Celebrating those tenement dwellers is Ruth J. Abram, president of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, located at the corner of Orchard and Broome in lower Manhattan.

Founded in 1998 and opened to public in 1994, the Tenement Museum was created "to promote tolerance and historical perspective through the presentation and interpretation of the variety of immigrant and migrant experiences on Manhattan¹s Lower East Side." The museum offers a unique view of Manhattan history, celebrating the lives of regular folks who traveled to New York looking for opportunity and freedom.

"Most Americans living today descend not from gentry, and actually not even from people who had a rural experience," Abram observed, but from families "who were working-class poor." The museum, she noted, "is the first expression of that experience."

One tour begins on the steps of 97 Orchard St., a classic New York City tenement. Five floors high with four apartments per floor, the building was home for more than 6,000 people between 1863 and 1935, when the landlord--unable to afford city mandated renovations--was forced to evict them. Thousands of other tenement owners rehabilitated or tore down their buildings.

"The problem," Abram said, "is that when you destroy every shred of physical evidence of such a widely shared cultural memory, you suggest that neither the memory nor the people are worthy of inclusion in the historical record." Abram contends that the story of the tenement is crucial. "Without understanding it, we cannot understand American history." In telling the story, the tour presents contemporary social issues through a historical perspective.

One stop is inside the three-room apartment of Julius and Nathalie Gumpertz, German Jewish immigrants who in the early 1870s shared the tiny 325-square-foot space with their four children. Julius disappeared without a trace one day in 1874. Speculating he either died or abandoned his family, the tour reveals that Nathalie converted one of the rooms into a sewing area and embarked on a dressmaking career. "Nathalie Gumpertz is the first single mom ever presented in a national historic site," noted Abrams.

Another stop on the tour is the apartment of the Baldizzi family, Sicilian immigrants who lived at 97 Orchard Street from 1928 through 1935. Like the Gumpertz's apartment, the Baldizzi's home offers a valuable historical perspective on current issues.

In 1923 Adolfo Baldizzi, a young cabinet maker from Palermo, stowed away on a ship bound for New York, believing American streets were paved with gold. A year later his wife Rosaria illegally entered the US through Canada. During the Depression, Adolfo walked the streets with his tool box, eager to find work. Rosaria sewed coats in a garment factory until forced to quit or lose the family¹s Home Relief check. Abram said she hopes that "by introducing people to social issues through historic characters, we can raise the conversation about their contemporary implications"--in this case, immigration and welfare.

The museum also offers English classes to its neighbors, most of whom do not speak the language at home. The curriculum includes the diaries, letters and memoirs of earlier immigrants. Abram mentioned that one graduate who today works at the museum said, "I not only learned English. I learned that I was not alone: Other people have gone through what I have gone through." While the museum aims to help immigrants understand themselves, it also strives to help those born here understand immigrants today.

"We¹ve overheard visitors say very complimentary things about the immigrants they¹re meeting on our tour," Abram recalled. "They¹re rooting for the Baldizzi family, that they¹ll be able to find work. And they forgive them for coming in as illegal immigrants because they appreciate how much they wanted to be here." She said she hopes they will be equally sympathetic with new immigrants today.

As Rosaria and Adolfo Baldizzi¹s daughter Josephine explained 50 years after her family moved out of 97 Orchard, "When I came in contact with immigrants coming here now, I would say OOh my God, what country am I in? These are all foreign people. What are they all doing here?¹ Then I realized that these poor immigrants now are doing the same things that my parents did."