Lower East Side Tenement Museum

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum will develop an interpretive program for “Minding the Store,” a new exhibit that marks the museum’s first attempt to interpret the commercial spaces that occupied the basement storefronts of its landmark tenement, at 97 Orchard Street, from the time the building opened in 1863 until the late 1980s, when the museum took occupancy. This new exhibit, which is scheduled to open in January 2011, will allow the museum to explore how selling goods and services allowed immigrant shopkeepers to create new lives as Americans. The museum will use its funds to create a multilayered visitor experience of the exhibit through the creation of engaging tour content, tour guides training, and the incorporation of a participatory multimedia display.