{"nrhp_refnum":"92000556","name":"Tenement Building at 97 Orchard Street","other_names":["Lower East Side Tenement Museum"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"97 Orchard St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"New York","county":"Manhattan","state":"NY","lat":40.71855281050006,"lon":-73.99027660476209,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1992-05-19","is_nhl":true,"nhl_designated_date":"1994-04-19","areas_of_significance":["European","Social History","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["national","local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A five-story brick tenement with a raised basement at 97 Orchard Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side, erected in 1863-64 in simple Italianate style, with shops at street level.","why_significant":"The nomination argues it is an outstanding survivor of the humble tenements that housed immigrants during the greatest wave of immigration in American history. Its preserved rooms, wallpaper, plumbing and lighting show the direct effects of tenement reform laws, especially the 1901 Tenement House Act. Its upper floors were sealed from the mid-1930s until 1988, which left an unusual degree of integrity.","narrative":"Built in 1863-64 on Manhattan's Lower East Side, this five-story brick tenement with a raised basement housed immigrant families for about seventy years. Its exterior is a simple Italianate design, with segmental-arched windows and a bracketed galvanized-iron cornice, and shops occupy the street level. German immigrants who built it were among the first on that blockfront. Inside, each upper floor held four small apartments of roughly 325 square feet, and toilets, a ventilation shaft and new plumbing were added in 1905 in response to reform laws. After the upper floors were sealed in the mid-1930s, rooms, wallpaper and fixtures survived largely untouched until 1988. The nomination treats the building as a rare, nearly anonymous example of a housing type tied to mass immigration. It also shows layer by layer how tenement legislation, including the 1901 act, changed daily life for residents in New York City.","period_of_significance":"1863-mid-1930s","architect_builder":"Unknown","architectural_style":"LATE VICTORIAN/Italianate","criteria":["A","C","D"],"status_note":"The upper floors have been vacant since the 1930s and are deteriorated, while the shops on the first floor and basement continued in use. The building is also described as the home of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.","vacant_flag":true,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:50:39.206542-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/92000556_NHL.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/92000556/003c495784-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/92000556/003c495784-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY 2.0","author":"ajay_suresh","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Tenement_Museum_(51624759160).jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">ajay_suresh</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY 2.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Tenement_Museum_(51624759160).jpg"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"00001015","name":"Lower East Side Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/new-york/lower-east-side-historic-district-00001015/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75315866","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_East_Side_Tenement_Museum","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q901533"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/new-york/manhattan/tenement-building-at-97-orchard-street-92000556/"}