Journal 8

Today was our last trip to New York City as a class. It was raining pretty bad so I was hoping that it wouldn’t get canceled, and luckily it didn’t so we pushed through the rain and toured lower East side. Our first stop was at the Essex Street Market which was “built in 1940 to house pushcart peddlers whom Mayor Fiorello La Guardia legislated off the streets, the market offers food for all tastes- Latino, Jewish, and upscale urbanite” (BG p.123). This place had everything from Chocolate to selling meat and they had big grocery stores, clothing and hair cutting places all in this wide open area. This Market was for the largely populated area of immigrants, the largest in the world and they went to the Essex Market because they had a variety of different culture food for good prices.

After we left the Market we made our way to the Tenement Museum where we were a little bit early for our tour of the tenement which they had kept the same to show people how they lived back in the day. So we had time to look around the gift shop and watch a movie about immigration in America. We learned that the “Tenements, built to exploit all available space and maximize the return for the landlord” (BG p.122). But before we went in we got split up into two group because of how small the tenements were they couldn’t fit us all in one room. The one that we went into was built by a German and they know this because it was in a German neighborhood and in this building they had two Irish families. Our tour lady told us that this was a clean area in that time and she should us a picture. It looked very dirty with garbage everywhere and roads filled with dirt. But the tour guide told us they didn't have place to dump garbage like they do now so in worse areas the garbage was ten times higher. This caused health conditions that lead to people being sick and dying. The milk that they gave to their kids was old and filled with chalk to make it look thicker and mostly it was poison. So many babies died in the tenements and the funerals cost money that they didn’t have so they looked for people that could help them pay for it and in return you had to vote for them. Also I found out that the rent for these tenement was 10 dollars a month for a room. These rooms look small with the kitchen right next to the bedroom and only one bed to sleep in. The water was all the way down on the street so when you needed it you had to carry a bucket all the way up the stairs and go to the bathroom outside right next to the water supple.

The tour had ended in the tenement and we went to a Chinese restaurant which was a treat from the professor which was a nice last class meal. After the meal we meet with our other tour guide that took us into Chinatown. Our tour guide told us about 8% of the United States are immigrants and in New York its about 30% made up of immigrants and mostly Caribbean and Chinese people living in New York. Its as high as it was when Ellis Island was in service. Another fact was that Irish and German were heavily populated in New York and as well as the United States. We started to walk through Chinatown which I noticed the streets were narrow and packed with shopping and places to eat. Before this was Chinatown there were Jewish families living here and went to Stuart High School which is where many famous comedians like Ben Stiller's father. The Jewish community took over churches that Catholics gave up when they started moving out and the reason why they took over churches instead of building there own was they didn’t have money. In this area they didn’t have parks because again money was an issue but people got together to try to show the city they need a green space for the kids because they were mostly playing in the streets needed a park. So around 1990 they built the first park in Chinatown called Stuart Park. We visited the Jewish newspaper building where they printed out news in there language. These people were socialist people because they were getting unfair pay and worked hard with no rights. So there newspaper was socialist and on the building was four faces of socialist leaders and one face that was taken down was Karl Marx’s.

Chinatown has been getting bigger and bigger taken over more areas in the Lower Eastside. The reason for this is the heavy amount of immigrants coming in from China. They get here from boats and they look for jobs under the Manhattan Bridge where there are buses that take them to their place that they work. These buses go around the area and to very random places like West Virginia to work. They look for what ever work they can find to pay off there debt to the people who got them here. After learning about that we walked under the bridge to a school that was named after the first Chinese man to have a college degree from America Young Wang. This man after went to China to bring the western school system to China. After that we walked to Five point which was the first largest slum of the city and the reason it was called five point was because there was five roads leading to this area. There use to be a natural lake here and they drained it out to make the first suburbs but the high classed moved out due to flooding and this lead to Irish and African Americans moving in because the houses were cheap. Then we walked through the park that was in the middle of five points to Little Italy where our last stop was going to be at. We learned little Italy is small now due to the Italian moving out but mostly still here for a tourist site. We talked about the church and how we had a great class this year. But even though it was sad leaving my classmates, we all went together across the street to get cannoli's. Then we said our goodbyes and took the train home. What a great place to end our long city journey.