The Apartment Tours

Each tour focuses on a different family and era, and together they cover more than a century of American immigration history. You choose which story you want to step into:↗

The Schneiders (1865) — German immigrants John and Caroline Schneider ran a lager beer saloon from the building from 1864 to 1886, serving their community through wars, depressions, and changing temperance laws. The Moores (1869) — Two distinct families share this surname: Joseph and Rachel Moore, a young Black couple in post-Civil War Manhattan, and Joseph and Bridget Moore, Irish Catholics who fled famine. The Gumpertzes (1870s) — Natalie Gumpertz, a German-Jewish widow left to raise three daughters alone during the Panic of 1873, working in the garment industry. The Levines (1902) — A Russian-Jewish family running a garment shop from their apartment during the Kosher Meat Boycott era. The Rogarshevskys & Baldizzis (1910s–1930s) — A Jewish family from the Russian Empire and their Italian neighbors, two households navigating the Great Depression side by side. The Confinos (1916) — Sephardic Jews fleeing war in Kastoria, Greece. This tour features a costumed actor playing real teenager Victoria Confino, making it especially popular with families. The Epsteins & Saez Velezes (1950s–60s) — A Holocaust survivor family and a Puerto Rican migrant mother, both searching for belonging in a changing neighborhood. The Wongs (1970s) — A Chinese family that arrived after the landmark 1965 immigration law opened new doors.↗↗

The tours move through recreated apartments furnished with everyday objects recovered from the building or carefully matched to the era — packets of Linit starch, wooden furniture handcrafted by a family member, tickets to Jewish holiday events, flyers for English classes for Yiddish speakers. At 97 Orchard Street, most of the building remains in its unrestored 1930s condition, with soot-encrusted wallpaper and darkened hallways that feel startlingly authentic.↗↗

Walking and Food Tours

Beyond the apartment tours, the museum offers neighborhood walking tours that extend the story into the streets around Orchard. The Historic Lower East Side tour traces how residents shaped and were shaped by their blocks over the 19th and early 20th centuries, from stores to parks to movie theaters. Reclaiming Black Spaces reveals the often-overlooked presence of Black New Yorkers in the area from the 1640s onward. A dedicated architecture-focused tour highlights the designers and everyday people who shaped the neighborhood's distinctive streetscape.↗

The food experiences combine apartment visits with tastings at local vendors, exploring over 150 years of immigrant food culture. Options range from a shorter pairing with a visit to The Pickle Guys to the full Foods of the Lower East Side tour making nine stops including pickles, pretzels, and ice cream. These food tours are a particularly engaging way to understand how culinary traditions defined life in the tenements.↗↗

What Makes It Special

The Tenement Museum occupies a rare position among New York's cultural institutions. While Ellis Island's immigration museum tells the story of arrival, the Tenement Museum tells the story of what happened next — the daily grind of making a life in a cramped three-room apartment, working in a garment shop, or keeping a neighborhood store afloat through economic collapse. Its strength is specificity: you learn about one family, one building, one era, and through that intimate lens understand something vast about the American experience.↗↗

Visitors consistently praise the quality of the educators, describing them as knowledgeable, thoughtful, and genuinely enthusiastic. The small group sizes (maximum 15) create an intimate atmosphere unlike typical museum tours. Reviewers note it is an experience that works for all ages, with several mentioning return visits to try different family stories. One fact that surprises many: at its peak, roughly 60 percent of households in 97 Orchard Street were multiracial, a diversity that challenges common assumptions about the neighborhood's past.↗↗

Practical Information

The museum is accessible only by guided tour. All tours begin at the Visitor Center at 103 Orchard Street, on the corner of Orchard and Delancey streets. Check in at the front desk at least 10 minutes before your scheduled tour start time. Advance reservations are strongly recommended, as tours have a 15-person maximum and often sell out.↗↗

Apartment and walking tours cost $30 for adults, seniors, and students. Food experiences are $55. Members receive free admission to apartment tours and 50 percent off food tours. Discounts are available for teachers, active military, neighborhood residents, visitors with disabilities, and members of select cultural organizations. A $3 per ticket service fee applies to online and phone orders.↗

The Visitor Center and Shop are open daily from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM. A 30-minute film narrated by Edward Burns, titled Treasures of New York, can be screened in the center's theater, and the shop carries an extensive selection of books on New York history, immigration, and tenement life.↗↗

Accessibility: The wheelchair-accessible entrance faces the Delancey Street side at 81 Delancey Street. The museum offers assistive hearing loops, assisted listening devices, and wheelchair-accessible restrooms. There is no on-site parking, though metered street parking exists nearby. The museum provides private tours for visitors on the Autism Spectrum with two weeks advance notice.↗↗↗

Getting There

The museum is two blocks from the Delancey Street–Essex Street subway station (F, J, M, or Z trains). From the Grand Street station, exit onto Grand and Chrystie streets, walk east on Grand Street for four blocks, then turn left onto Orchard and walk north for two blocks. By bus, the M15 Local stops at Allen and Delancey, directly across from the museum, and the M14A stops at Delancey and Essex.↗↗