President. I rise to join my friend and colleague Senator DAMATO in introducing a bill that will authorize a small but most significant addition to the National Park system by designating the Lower East Side Tenement Museum a national historic site. For 150 years New York Citys Lower East Side has been the most vibrant. populous. and famous immigrant neighborhood in the Nation. From the first waves of Irish and German immigrants to Italians and Eastern European Jews to the Asian. Latin. and Caribbean immigrants arriving today. the Lower East Side has provided millions their first American home. For many of them that home was a brick tenement. six or so stories. no elevator. maybe no plumbing. maybe no windows. a business on the ground floor. and millions of our forbearers upstairs. The Nation has with great pride preserved log cabins. farm houses. and other symbols of our agrarian roots. We have reopened Ellis Island to commemorate and display the first stop for 12 million immigrants who arrived in New York City. Until now we have not preserved a sample of urban. working class life as part of the immigrant experience. For many of those disembarked on Ellis Island the next stop was a tenement on the Lower East Side. such as the one at 97 Orchard Street. It is here that the Lower East Side Tenement Museum shows us what that next stop was like.
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immigrant immigrants