NYC - May 18, 2010

97 Orchard Street

Tenement Museum

tenement building

tenement building

Another beautiful spring day in NYC. After a quick breakfast at a local deli, "Eat Here Now", I decided to take the subway down to the Lower East Side of NYC. Although I decided to explore the area on my own, there are several organized tours sponsored the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy www.nycjewishtours.org. The LESJC will gladly arrange private customized tours for various groups. They can arrange to see where your great grandparents may have lived, walk on historic streets, enter sacred sites, and get a sense of how people actually lived back then. One of their most interesting tours is entitled "Bialystoker the Beautiful, Shteibl Row and Historic East Broadway. The tour includes the magnificently restored Bialystoker Synagogue, the landmarked Yiddish Daily Forward Building and a visit to Congregation Beth Hachasidim De Polen.
On my own, I was able to roam the streets and stumble upon the old tenement houses. I tried to imagine how this past push cart capital of America was teeming with merchants hawking goods to new immigrants. A highlight of the LES is the Tenement Museum www.tenement.org which focuses on America's urban immigrant history. There are several free tours available daily.
As I continued on my way down Orchard Street, I bumped into one of the few hotels in the area, The Blue Moon Hotel www.bluemoon-nyc.com. National Geographic Traveler (April, 2008)
named it one of the 150 best boutique hotels in the Western Hemisphere. The hotel offers Pied-a-Terre rooms at $275 per night as well as Quintessential Rooms at $625 as well as various categories in between those rates. All rooms come standard with the usual amenities as well as complimentary continental breakfast every morning. The hotel is located near the corners of Orchard and Delancey, touted as the 57th and 5th of the Lower East Side.