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The Nation; Museum
Plan Hits Too Close to Home; Dispute: Space- hungry N.Y. tenement exhibit
seeks to evict tenement neighbors. 'The irony just smacks you in the face,'
opponent says.
The Los Angeles Times;
Los Angeles, Calif.; Apr 18, 2002; JOSH GETLIN;
(Copyright, The Times Mirror
Company; Los Angeles Times 2002 Allrights reserved)
They were
once joined at the hip in the heart of New York's Lower East Side, two
identical brick tenements offering cheap, dimly lit apartments to waves of
immigrants from all over the world.
But they came to play different roles in the community: One was turned into a
museum celebrating the area's immigrant history. The other is home to 15
families, as well as a popular Chinese restaurant on the ground floor.
And now, in a move that has some shaking their heads, the museum is attempting
to evict the people who live and work next door--many of them immigrants--so
it can expand and accommodate more tourists.
"The irony just smacks you in the face," said Martha Danziger, a
community leader who opposes the Lower East Side Tenement Museum's bid to take
over the adjacent building. "They want to create a virtual tenement
museum in a neighborhood that already has tenements."
Built in 1863, the twin walk-ups at 97 and 99 Orchard St. were fixtures in a
neighborhood that welcomed Irish, German, Jewish, Italian, Puerto Rican and
Chinese families. Yet now, as booming property values transform the area, the
feud between the buildings' owners highlights a battle over the community's
future--and its place in America's immigrant memory.
This is a street where living history collides with living people.
Opened in 1988, the Tenement Museum is a national landmark that has restored
turn-of-the-century immigrant apartments to their original conditions and
draws 90,000 visitors each year. Ruth Abram, the founder, says she wants to
welcome 200,000 tourists and can only do this by acquiring the building next
door. She has asked state officials to seize the property through eminent
domain if a deal cannot be worked out.
But Lou Holzman, whose family members have been living at 99 Orchard St. since
1910, has no intention of selling the building. Neither does his business
partner, Peter Liang, who runs the Congee Village restaurant and employs more
than 50 Chinese and Latino immigrant workers. Both say the use of eminent
domain to help a small museum would be absurd.
"It's easy to sympathize with the two sides, so the question is, which
view of the Lower East Side do you embrace?" said sociologist Christopher
Mele, author of "Selling the Lower East Side." "Is this area a
gold mine of immigrant history that should be preserved? Or is it a living,
breathing place filled with new and older immigrants who should be
protected?"
Eminent Domain Decision Nears
Tensions are rising on both sides as the Empire State Development Corp., New
York state's economic development agency, nears a decision--expected this
week--on whether to proceed with the eminent domain. And the dispute is
playing out against a steady drumbeat of gentrification that is rapidly
changing the community from a crime- infested slum into an edgy but vibrant
melting pot of bars, boutiques and restaurants.
The Lower East Side is a study in contrast. While it continues to pack waves
of new immigrants, mainly Chinese, into tenements, the once-rundown buildings
of the nearby Bowery are being turned into million-dollar co-ops. The average
rent at 99 Orchard St. is $1,600 for a 350-square-foot apartment--a price that
is high but hardly atypical, given Manhattan's tight rental housing market.
Bordered on the north by 14th Street, on the south by Fulton and Franklin
streets and running west from Broadway to the East River, the neighborhood is
growing economically, despite the effects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
While Latino groups push for more affordable housing and criticize the trend
toward higher-priced apartments, young Orthodox Jewish couples have begun
moving back into the aging, high-rise units that were once occupied by their
grandparents. On a recent afternoon, the sidewalk shops and restaurants near
Orchard Street were filled with the aromas of garlic kosher pickles,
fresh-baked empanadas and pungent Chinese congee.
"This is one of America's most symbolic neighborhoods," said
historian Suzanne Wasserman, associate director of the Gotham Center at City
University of New York. "It's constantly reinventing itself, and many
groups see it as sacred because so many people can trace their roots back to
this community. Everybody wants a piece of the Lower East Side."
The community is no stranger to controversy. As immigrants poured in during
the late 19th century, it became America's prototype of a big-city slum.
Journalist Jacob Riis wrote his powerful newspaper expose "How the Other
Half Lives" after visiting the squalid area in 1890. Ever since then,
activists have been drawn to a neighborhood that was the first glimpse of
America for millions of people who got off the boat at Ellis Island.
Abram said her overriding goal is to promote tolerance for the different kinds
of people who have lived on Orchard Street--and to use history as a tool to
better understand the present.
Building Offers Guided Tours
The narrow, six-story building offers guided tours of meticulously restored
apartments that were occupied by poor immigrant families dating from 1897. The
museum also sponsors film festivals, walking tours and community forums on
social issues, including the problems of Garment District workers on the Lower
East Side and America's historical perceptions of poverty.
"We want people to understand how hard it must have been to come to
America and live in such small apartments," Abram said. "But I worry
that a lot of the people who come away moved by the experience of Jewish and
Italian families leave the museum and then look down on the Chinese and
Hispanic people who live in the same neighborhood today."
It is this very attitude, however, that infuriates her opponents.
"Here's a museum that wants to promote the history of immigration and
educate people," Holzman said. "But it proposes to do this evicting
tenants and throwing 50 immigrants out of work. It makes no sense."
Many New Yorkers fled the Lower East Side in the 1960s and '70s, when the area
was filthy and dangerous. Yet Holzman is proud that he stayed because his
family has roots here.
Holzman once ran a jazz and rock recording studio in the building, but he
recently formed a partnership with Liang to renovate the property. The
six-story tenement's living quarters, which had been closed for years,
reopened last fall.
As the owners spruced up 99 Orchard St., Abram was feeling growing pains next
door. She said she badly needed additional space- -in part to build an
elevator so disabled visitors could enjoy the museum--and had been attempting
for some time to buy Holzman's building. But he had no interest in selling.
A nasty feud erupted two years ago, when Abram charged that the renovation
next door had structurally damaged the foundation of the Tenement Museum. She
sought help from political allies wherever she could find them.
"The state responded, and we were just so relieved," Abram said,
noting that the Empire State Development Corp. agreed to consider taking
Holzman's building through eminent domain.
Although it is highly unusual for a private entity to request such action, it
is not unheard of.
Once initiated, eminent domain proceedings are rarely overturned, and
Holzman's main challenge would be over the price to be paid for his property.
Although the museum once offered to buy his building for $1.3 million, he said
the full value of a newly renovated 99 Orchard St. is between $7 million and
$10 million.
'A Matter of Public Need'
Whatever the final price, Abram said, the condemnation is "a matter of
public need," no different than previous seizures of land for public
purposes such as freeways and large commercial projects.
Unfortunately, she added, state law had prevented her from speaking publicly
about the eminent domain proposal until it was announced in December. And by
then new tenants had moved into Holzman's building. If the building is
condemned, Abram said, tenants will be helped to find new homes; they will
also be compensated for moving expenses.
"It was so unfair for this to happen to the people who just got
here," said Suzy Lease, 25, a waitress who moved in last fall.
Many observers wish that the two sides could have worked out some kind of
accommodation. While Abram insists she must have 99 Orchard St., others ask
why the museum couldn't have looked for tenement property elsewhere.
"In almost any other neighborhood, this would be a simple real estate
dispute," said Hasia Diner, a New York University history professor and
author of "Lower East Side Memories." "But there is so much
communal memory in this area. It's become a collision over sacred space."
[Illustration]
Caption: PHOTO: Building owner Lou Holzman, left, and business partner Peter
Liang are fighting the expansion of the next-door museum, at left.;
PHOTOGRAPHER: JEFF ZELEVANSKY / For The Times; GRAPHIC-MAP: New York, Los
Angeles Times
Credit: TIMES STAFF WRITER
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Sub Title:
[HOME EDITION]
Edition:
Record edition
Start Page:
A.14
ISSN:
04583035
Dateline:
NEW YORK
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