Lower East Side of NY
Pushcars lined Hester St
in front of the shops
Rivington St, difficult for traffic to get through
Postcard from the Blavatnik Archive, Eldridge Museum
The Lower East Side got going in the C19th. In 1818, a market-house was built in the centre of Grand St between Ludlow and Essex Sts, south of the present-day market. The newcomers, from Germany and Ireland, arrived into NY City en masse by the 1840s-50s. Tenement Museum suggested that 1+ million people left Ireland, often landing in NY. Then more of the new Irish arrivals to Manhattan fled after the Great Famine of 1848. In the 1840s NY’s population grew by 60%, and grew by another 58% in the 1850s.
The Historical Atlas of NY reported that the Germans arrived in 3 waves: 1] c1.3 mill Germans arrived during the antebellum era (pre-1861); 2] a mass wave followed the Civil War, 1865-79 and 3] the largest wave from 1880 on. Most Germans settled in a 400-block area, north of Division St and east of the Bowery. Along the East River, this was known as Kleindeutschland/Little Germany.
In 1843, the Association for Improving the Conditions of the Poor described housing as problematic in size, arrangement, water supplies, warmth and ventilation; sewage was also in bad condition. Families moved in and out of these tenements without repairs, deteriorating with time. Clearly the overcrowded Lower East produced serious sanitation problems.
For hundreds of thousands of immigrants, a teeming Lower East Side tenement was their first home in the Golden Land. Note the Tenement House Law they passed in 1879, seeking to limit the proportion of a block that could be built upon.
Most of the Jewish immigrants who left Eastern Europe back then, especially Russians, left for economic reasons or escaping persecution. Their immigration to NY was a permanent relocation as most had no capital to bring with them. They needed the cheapest housing options. The first pushcarts in Hester St arrived in 1886 when the area was facing massive change. The wave of immigration brought 2.5+ million Eastern European Jews to the U.S, a third starting on the Lower East Side.
In the European shtetls, pushcarts had been a common sight. Under Tsarist rule Jews could not own land, and the peddling of goods was one of the few ways of surviving. So on arrival to the U.S, peddling was a recommended job. In 1880 a cart rented for 10 cents, capable of carrying fish, pickles, clothes and siddurim. And because peddlers were their own boss, observant Jews could keep their Sabbath.
Hester St carts, 1935
History Today
By 1900 the carts grew up 25,000+, creating one of the most iconic shopping districts. The Street Vendor Project said the street vendors had to peddle a range of goods, while dealing with licensing, discrimination and the daily struggles of running a moving business. Yet the story of the pushcart was an integral part of immigrants’ experience, bringing the daily necessities to the front doors of the tenements.
Photo journalist Jacob Riis’ became an important tool for documenting immigrants’ hardships. He published How the Other Half Lives 1890, inviting the middle classes to walk along NY’s immigrant enclaves, where crowds jostled and shouted in foreign tongues. Thus the unsafe living conditions of the Lower East Side became a larger public concern. The proper American way to shop meant going into stores where the merchandise was neat and prices were clearly marked. The proper shops were blocked and the progressive reformers worried that carts were part of an exploitative system.
The NY Times ran an article about pushcarts in 1893, disparaging the entire Jewish and Lower East Side immigrant community. “This neighbourhood, filled by the people who claim to have been driven from Poland and Russia, was perhaps the filthiest place on the continent”.
Riis and Lillian Wald’s concerns about immigrants appeared in the NY Herald in 1895; it described the frightful conditions they found in the Lower East Side. This led to the Tenement House Committee making maps in 1896, to conduct a formal investigation of tenement houses: the population of each block, plus the number of typhoid fever, TB, scarlet fever and diphtheria cases. In response, the city passed the Tenement House Law of 1901. Riis also showed the appalling reality of neighbourhood life in Battle of the Slum 1902.
With the Great Depression, new public works started. The City’s Dept of Buildings demolished some brick tenement buildings along Essex St, between Delancey and Rivington Sts. By the 1930s Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia ruled that the open pushcart market was antiquated and unsanitary; peddlers were a danger to themselves and to others, by creating traffic congestion. Using federal money, LaGuardia wanted to create new indoor markets and in his attempts to professionalise pushcart vendors, street business drastically declined. Two architects were commissioned by the Dept of Markets to design the Essex St Market and vital federal funds were made available via Pres Franklin D Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration/WPA.
Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, 1940
dedicated to ending pushcarts, making the Lower East Side safe & modern
Wiki
Essex St Market, opened Jan 1940
www.essexmarket.nycIn Jan 1940, 3,500 locals gathered on Essex St for the opening of a new retail market. Mayor LaGuardia arrived, made a speech and inspected the outside of the new red-brick building, the 4th indoor municipal retail space built during LaGuardia’s rule. Then the market doors opened as hundreds of would-be indoor consumers rushed in, and the old era of East Side pushcart markets ended. Soon after the Essex St Market opened in early 1940, the area changed. Many old families moved to Brooklyn and Puerto Ricans began to move in.
Conclusion
Conclusion
For 180 years 3 blocks of land transformed from farm estate, to tenement housing, to awful slums, to an enclosed public market. I thank Alexandra Hall and Marjorie Ingall and recommend people visit the Tenement Museum,
20 comments:
NEW YORK CITY AND OPEN AIR MARKETS Report said LaGuardia's timing was poor. The Great Depression impoverished everyone. During Second World War, the days of the open air pushcart markets seemed over but immediately after the war government policies were changed due to the shortages of major foods supplies. So the city government began issuing licences more frequently, which helped returning ex-servicemen get a job. And it helped bring fresh food to poor community.
Annual Report, Department of Markets. City of New York 1948.
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~dgp48/eport/documents/foodcartpaper.pdf
I'd not heard of the pushcarts but I learnt some of the history of the Lower East side while touring past and what a fascinating area it was, perhaps the most interesting area of Manhattan.
Student
I remember the topic very well from lectures. Not about pushcarts in particular, but that modernisation of policies and practices always favoured the well heeled families and made life tougher for struggling families.
From reading the reports, my original feeling had been that LaGuardia was well supported by the entire community. Now I think that many families felt that LaGuardia ignored their needs.
Andrew
I said exactly the same about the East End of London. That it must have been very difficult living in a densely populated part of the city, with heaps of children squished into 2 bedrooms, jobs that did't pay enough income and rampant infections. But these were thriving communities, safe havens in the New World.. and fascinating for tourists today.
My grandmother and her siblings lived in the East End of London and loved the area.
Joe's aunt and uncle emigrated to the Lower East Side of NY, and loved NY for the rest of their lives.
From "Manhattan" by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart
"We'll have Manhattan
The Bronx and Staten Island too
It's lovely going through the Zoo
It's very fancy
On old Delancey Street, you know
The subway charmes us so
When balmy breezes blow
To and fro
And tell me what street
Compares with Mott Street in July
Sweet push carts gently gliding by
The great big city's a wond'rous toy
Just made for a girl and boy
We'll turn Manhattan into an isle of joy"
Anon
thank you. Rodgers and Hart certainly understood the romance of 1925 Manhattan. And appropriately there was no mention of noise or squishiness in a romance.
Do you think that La Guardia was trying to limit the number of migrants coming into New York?
Joe
all the reviews of LaGuardia's policies and behaviours suggested the very opposite. He was a supportive member of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalisation at a time when Congress was debating the number of immigrants allowed into the country. He spoke Italian at home, then went out to learn Yiddish, German, French, Croatian and Hungarian to assist the migrants as personally as he could.
Yes he began slum-clearance and cheap housing projects in New York that may have made poor migrants struggle, but it was always well motivated.
Boa noite. Parabéns pelo seu excelente trabalho e explicações.
Luiz
Than you. I think the issues might have been faced by migrant populations all over the world. Of course New York became a very big city, very quickly.
a pushcart in Bendigo was, I believe, how Melbourne retail legend Sidney Myer began, before he had an actual shop. NYC had plenty of pushcarts in 5th Ave gutters selling food which surprised me on my first visit there. The one in Rockefeller Plaza selling softdrinks was informed by my teenage companion that he was undercut by another cart, and he gave her the drink at the other guy's price. New York, New York, full of surprises.
Ms O'Dyne,
welcome back :) You are a genius! I lived in Bendigo for a few years and loved it, but I had never thought to connect Sidney Myer in Victoria with New York's passion for pushcarts. He was a Russian migrant who came to Australia at the same time the New York Russians arrived.
Myer was born in 1878 and educated in Russia (now Belarus), and later managed his mother's drapery business. So by the time he worked in the clothing business in Australia in 1899, he already had some experience. I knew he created a a small drapery shop in rural Bendigo but I had no idea that he carried his goods to sell at families' front doors in a pushcart. Only when the money rolled in did Mr Myer build shops in other cities, sold his pushcart and became arguably the most famous retailer in Australia.
Dear Helen,
with great eagerness I read your very fascinating post!
I didn't know much about the Lower Eastside of NY - the photos speak are impressive.
I think many Germans nowadays would be very surprised that so many Germans were migrants then (history sadly is not in many heads of people who are ranting against fugitives coming to Germany now).
The name "Riis" looks Dutch to me - the Flying Dutchman never tires of telling me who founded NY :-)
Britta
you might be pleased to hear that photo journalist Jacob Riis was born and educated in Denmark and migrated to the US in his 20s :) Not Dutch.
The history of German immigration to the U.S is very well documented. Just between 1845-55, for example, more than a million Germans immigrated to escape economic hardship and especially escaping the 1848 revolution. They left via Bremen or Hamburg, and landed in New York, Boston or Philadelphia. Very hardworking people!
Makes me think of the Marx Brothers - Minnies Boys is title of a play about those early days NYC [their films were all on 1950's Melbourne TV when I was very impressionable culturally]
Marx Brothers history NYC. Groucho was my intro to humour.
Re Anon above & Rogers&Hart: I believe the widow of Hart lived in Inkerman Rd East St.Kilda, possibly the 1950's. My 90-y-o friend's mother [who founded the Astra Music Society] was her friend. As for romance, Woody Allen's Manhattan is a cinematic love poem to a city, starring the soaring music
Anne
I don't remember the play, but thanks for the connection to this post :)
Their mother Minnie, who came from a German family of entertainers and musicians, migrated to New York in the 1880s. Thus the brothers had all the qualities I was interested in this post. They were 1] born in New York, 2] the sons of German parents and 3] Jewish. Minnie Marx naturally became the Brothers' manager.
Ann
I cannot remember Lorenz Hart ever marrying, so could your friend's mother have been referring to his brother's Teddy Hart's wife, Dorothy Hart? What I DO know is that Dorothy wrote a biography of her brother in law, Lorenz.
Re Allan Konigsberg/Woody Allen, he shared many of the Marx Brothers' qualities, only he was one generation younger. 1] His grandparents were German-speaking immigrants to the U.S. 2] His parents were born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 3] He is Jewish. No wonder Woody Allen's Manhattan was a cinematic love poem :)
I knew it was one of them, thanks for your expert clarification. Maybe Mrs H met other US Harts visiting MEL at Inkerman Rd soirees. She was very well connected musically. Came to MEL from Perth in 1928 with her sister to study at the conservatorium & they played in public many times.
Ann
I love blogging :) You never know what new information you learn, or what links will be made to information that once seemed unconnected.
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