{"id":156,"date":"2020-08-13T05:33:12","date_gmt":"2020-08-13T05:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/shirtwaistsandtenements\/?page_id=156"},"modified":"2020-09-02T09:36:13","modified_gmt":"2020-09-02T09:36:13","slug":"perspectives-and-photographs-of-the-lower-east-side","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/shirtwaistsandtenements\/?page_id=156","title":{"rendered":"Perspectives and Photographs of the Lower East Side"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
A postcard reading “NEW JEWISH MARKET ON THE EAST SIDE, NEW YORK” printed between 1901 – 1907 depicts the Lower East Side, highlighting the curiosity surrounding new immigrants and this neighborhood. (Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

White American society viewed the Jewish immigrants living in the Lower East Side tenements as Others but were also very curious and came into their community to observe. Immigrants were viewed, written about and photographed in response to great curiosity about their cultures, traditions and living conditions. In Out of the Shadow: A Russian Jewish Girlhood on the Lower East Side<\/em>, Rose Cohan describes being hospitalized by White Americans and wondering why she was receiving this attention. \u201cI did not know that the part of the city where I was living was called the East Side, or the Slums, or the Ghetto, and that the East Side, or the Slums, or the Ghetto was still new and a curiosity to the people in this part of the city.\u201d1<\/sup> The media surrounding the Lower East Side propagated the notion that Jewish people were Others. In a letter to the editor appearing in The New York Times <\/em>in 1899 titled \u201cRomance VS. Reality,\u201d the author who went by the byline J.F.F. argued that the picture painted by Jacob Riss, a journalist, photographer and \u2018muckraker\u2019 – advocate for social reform who exposed corruption – saw the Lower East Side \u201cthrough a rose colored glass\u201d when he described its \u201cpicturesqueness and humor.\u201d2<\/sup> In his letter to the editor he writes, 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Instead of humor I found – dirt; instead of picturesqueness – squalor and reprehensible neglect of the commonest laws of decency\u2026 filth, quarrel\u2026 noise and noxious orders alternate and fill up the gamut of these people’s lives.3<\/sup>
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
This picture of the Lower East Side was taken to show the poverty and poor conditions. (Credit: Collections of the Tenement Museum)


<\/p> <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

While some considered Jewish immigrants a threat to White America because of their difference in culture and the impoverished part of New York City they lived in, others saw an opportunity to advocate for social reform. Reformers who had no knowledge of Jewish culture or traditions worked to aid immigrants’ living conditions and provide education and health services. These reforms however, were also an attempt to remake Jewish people as \u2018more\u2019 American by encouraging their participation in Whiteness. Jewish immigrants were taught English and White American social customs and norms in schools, settlement houses and hospitals. Many reformers were also missionaries who misused Christianity as a way to \u2018save\u2019 the Other. Rose Cohan tells how her siblings Leah and Ezekiel went to a school that was run by a missionary society. \u201cAny child in the class who would say a prayer received a slice of bread and honey.\u201d4<\/sup> She also tells of when she went to a hospital set up by reformers for poor people and immigrants, who had raised funding through the pictures and articles about the Lower East Side. At the hospital everyone only spoke English. Rose Cohan tells that \u201con Monday afternoons a missionary used to come to our ward\u2026. she would give out Hymn Books\u201d and \u201cBegan to talk about Christ.\u201d5<\/sup> 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were also many social workers and reformers who feared young unmarried Jewish immigrant women\u2019s perceived immorality and tried to set these young women on a path of virtuous Americanness.6<\/sup> In an article from the New York Times<\/em> titled \u201cNew York\u2019s Biggest Problem, Not Police, But Girls; Immodesty, Extravagance, and Ignorance Are Among Their Characteristics, Says Miss Trenholm, Head Worker of the East Side Settlement,\u201d published in 1912, Miss Trenholm, the head worker at the East Side Settlement House – an institution established to provide educations for those in need – discussed reform and young immigrant women. She states that \u201cthe problem of the health, the morals, and the education of our\u201d immigrant \u201cgirls is the greatest lot which now confronts us\u2026 the modern very poor New York girl is not a modest girl.\u201d7<\/sup> Although reformers were helping improve the conditions in tenements and provide education for immigrants on the Lower East Side, they did not understand Jewish culture or traditions and their reforms were a way for White society to lessen the fear of the Other and propagate White Supremacy. 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
An immigrant family photographed in their tenement building. (Credit: Collections of the Tenement Museum)


<\/p> <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Photographers went to the Lower East Side to capture foreignness, poverty and dirt.8<\/sup> There are pictures of bustling crowded streets filled with pushcart vendors and women who wore wigs, there are rundown buildings and cramped rooms and children who look dirty. These photos are only snapshots of the Lower East Side taken from an outsider\u2019s perspective, a single moment in a lifetime. The viewer sees the poverty, overcrowding and grim conditions, yet does not see the lives lived, and there are few pictures of joy or celebration thus dehumanizing those who lived there. These photographs don\u2019t show the perspectives of immigrants who are looking around but show the perspectives of White American\u2019s who are looking in. \u201cThe photographers see selectively because<\/em> they are outsiders,\u201d writes Deborah Dash Moore and David Lobenstine in \u201cPhotographing the Lower East Side: A Century\u2019s Work.\u201d9<\/sup> The pictures that can be viewed give access to the past, but in a narrative not by those who lived on the Lower East Side or who were Jewish immigrants. There are some immigrant testimonies and public records but the majority of  the sources used to teach about and understand the Lower East Side during the late 19th and early 20th centuries comes from White Americans. Today the pictures show a place of memory, but only a snapshot of what once was a much more colorful joy filled space.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.\u00a0 Rose Cohan, Out of the Shadow: A Russian Jewish Girlhood on the Lower East Side<\/em>,\u00a0 Documents in American Social History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 240-241.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.  \u201cRomance VS. Reality,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, May 23, 1899, https:\/\/timesmachine.nytimes.com\/timesmachine\/1899\/05\/23\/117922016.html?pageNumber=6<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.  Ibid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4.\u00a0 Rose Cohan, Out of the Shadow: A Russian Jewish Girlhood on the Lower East Side<\/em>, 160.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5.  Ibid., 242-243. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

6.  Riv-Ellen Prell. \u201cThe Ghetto Girl and the Erasure of Memory,\u201d in Remembering the Lower East Side: American Jewish Reflections<\/em>, ed by Hasia R. Diner, Jeffrey Shandler, and Beth S. Wenger, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 94.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7.  \u201cNew York\u2019s Biggest Problem, Not Police, But Girls; Immodesty, Extravagance, and Ignorance Are Among Their Characteristics, Says Miss Trenholm, Head Worker of the East Side Settlement,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, August 4, 1912. https:\/\/timesmachine.nytimes.com\/timesmachine\/1912\/08\/04\/issue.html<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

8.  Deborah Dash Moore and David Lobenstine, \u201cPhotographing the Lower East Side: A Century\u2019s Work.\u201d In Remembering the Lower East Side: American Jewish Reflections<\/em>, ed by Hasia R. Diner, Jeffrey Shandler, and Beth S. Wenger, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 30. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

9.  Ibid., 30.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

White American society viewed the Jewish immigrants living in the Lower East Side tenements as Others but were also very curious and came into their community to observe. Immigrants were viewed, written about and photographed in response to great curiosity about their cultures, traditions and living conditions. In Out of the Shadow: A Russian Jewish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1289,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-156","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/shirtwaistsandtenements\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/shirtwaistsandtenements\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/shirtwaistsandtenements\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/shirtwaistsandtenements\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1289"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/shirtwaistsandtenements\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/shirtwaistsandtenements\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/shirtwaistsandtenements\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/156\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/shirtwaistsandtenements\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}