Free admission to their ongoing programs. Free tour reservations through their Member Hotline. Free admission to the New York Historical Society. Half-price admission to the Merchant's House Museum. Free subscriptions to the quarterly Calendar of Events. 10% discount at Museum Shop & Home Economics. 25% discount on all online Museum Shop purchases. Invitation to museum events. Admission for cardholder and 4 guests.

Generations of new immigrants have made their way to the Lower East Side-and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum enables visitors to get a closer look into their lives and homes.

Located at 97 Orchard Street, the Museum's tenement building housed more than 7,000 people from 20 different countries between 1863 and 1935. The five-story building has 20 individual apartments, and the Museum has painstakingly researched and recreated the apartments of four different families who once lived in the building (they are currently working on a fifth apartment).

A visit offers the unique opportunity to see how new immigrants really lived; while today's New Yorkers are apt to complain about crowded apartments, the 375-square-foot apartments often housed whole families, and sometimes were also used for operating businesses. From coin-operated gas meters for heating water to eggs set out for shiva, the beauty of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum is in the intense attention to detail. Friendly, knowledgeable tour guides not only share the stories of the immigrant families who lived at 97 Orchard Street, they also help visitors connect to the experience by asking them to share their own interests and family history.

www.Tenement.org

Solicited by Laurie Gwen Shapiro