The Tenement Museum in New York City is n’t just dedicated to educating visitors about the account of in-migration in America — it ’s also the closest thing to a time travelling machine around today .
The museum building was once an actual tenement , and museum conservator have renovated several apartments to animate unlike period in the building ’s history . Each apartment exhibit represents a specific year in the life of the construction , as well as the life of the family who lived there . But museum researchers are n’t just interested in approximating the look of a 19th and former 20th C tenement — they’re committed to flummox all of the contingent right , down to the moldings .
regrettably , the trouble with this kind of commitment to detail is that traditional research methods come a bit flat when it comes to the material history of America ’s working classes . There are plenty of administration dedicated to preserving the furniture , artistic production , and clothing of King and queen , but up until lately , most preservationists paid picayune tending to the possession of the hapless .
So the Tenement Museum researchers add up up with their own research methods . They commissioned analyses of the tenement building ’s wallpaper and finishes to put together a pictorial matter of the walls in the past . For their mid-19th century exhibit , they seek through theearliestissues ofHarper ’s Weeklyforillustrationsof urban life . And for their other 20th century flat , they used crime picture photos .
Museum conservator David Favaloro toldmental_flossthat offense panorama photos provided the most naturalistic characterization of life in an early 20th C tenement house . The number with recreating the early twentieth hundred was n’t a deficiency of materials — peck of Progressive Era meliorist had written about the tenements , and Jacob Riis famously published an entire book of tenement photographs calledHow the Other Half Lives . The issue was that these reformers , while well - intentioned , were bias : their depictions accent the bad of tenement house biography — its sordidness and overcrowding — in an attempt to breathe in reform . They were n’t showing lifetime in the average tenement house .
That ’s where crime scene photos total in . Favaloro explained that since criminal offence scene photos were taken with only the motivation to document a criminal offence , any piece of furniture or ornament in the background were completely incidental . Which signify they really allow one of the most objective bet into early twentieth century material polish . “ Crime scene pic were less present , ” Favaloro explained . “ No one had a chance to straighten up . They ’re as is , which make them the most spontaneous trope of a tenement apartment that exists in the former 20th century . ” Many of the apartment seen in offence scene picture were in reality more high furnished and fondly deck than the pic taken by Riis , giving a good sense that these apartments could be made into a home , Favaloro order .
For their diversion of the early 20th century Rogarshevsky crime syndicate apartment , research worker referenced multiple crime scene photos , as well as other germ . But when it came down to the actual renovation of the apartment , one crime view picture in particular stood out . The photo , which can be seen on theTenement Museum website , prove a homicide victim in the foreground , while the background hold a wealth of detail for Tenement Museum researchers . The wall and drapery decorations , a flatulence line hanging from the roof , and an flowery dresser all give a sensation of the grain of life in an early 20th century tenement .
