Lower East Side Historic District

This section of Manhattan's Lower East Side covers 31 blocks bounded roughly by Houston Street, Essex Street, Allen Street, and Canal and Grand Streets. Its streets are lined mainly with five- to six-story brick tenements with shops at street level, alongside a few earlier Federal and Greek Revival rowhouses, synagogues, schools, a library, a dispensary and a firehouse. The area began as a middle-class neighborhood of single-family houses, became a center for German immigrants, and by the early twentieth century housed the world's largest Jewish community. The buildings show how tenement design changed over time, from pre-law structures with no light courts, to old-law dumbbell plans with small air shafts, to new-law buildings with larger courts. Styles include Italianate, Neo-Grec and Queen Anne. Rear yards contain archeological deposits that can reveal details about residents' ethnicity, wealth and consumer habits. It includes the Lower East Side Tenement Museum at 97 Orchard Street.