Historic Communities of Lower Manhattan and the Lower East Side are iconic in the story of America. We honor migrants and our true story that has always included complex themes of identity, forced migration, family migration, and a racially diverse, culturally-rich America.

2. Historic Communities of
New York’s Lower East Side
and Lower Manhattan

3. We are on Lenape Land
Lenni Lenape means "Human
Beings" or the "Real People" in
the Unami language.
Approximately 15,000 Lenape
people lived in what is now
New York City when Europeans
arrived in 1524.
Jennie Bobb and her daughter, Nellie
Longhat (both Delaware), Oklahoma, 1915
Credit: National Anthropological Archives,
Smithsonian Institution, 56928

4. The Lenape were not migratory. They lived in their homeland for thousands of years
before Dutch colonization. We know the ancestral homeland of the Lenape as present-
day Central and Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and
Delaware. Image from Algonquians of the East Coast, Time-Life Books.

5. The Lenape, comprised of many groups living along the
Hudson and Delaware rivers, became known as
Delaware Indians.
Recognized tribes of Lenape descendants are located
today in New Jersey, Wisconsin, southwest Oklahoma
and Ontario (Canada).

6. Jan Rodrigues, who arrived in 1613, was the first non-native to settle on the
island after he learned the Algonquin language and married into a Lenape
tribe.
His mother was African and father was Portuguese; he was raised in Santo
Domingo. Dutch traders used him as a translator in the initial 1613 voyage and
thereafter as an intermediary to trade with the Lenape people.
Credit: Jan Rodrigues depicted on a Harlem mural. Website of the African Burial Ground National Monument,
New York City.

7. African Americans –
unwilling founders of New
York before the large
European migration
Enslaved Africans were
forced to work present day
New York, the colony of
New Amsterdam, as early
as 1626.
“Unearthed” sculpture by Frank Bender.
Inspired by Lower Manhattan African burial
ground.
Image from Wikimedia Commons

8. New York was one of the largest trading centers of enslaved
black people from Africa and the Caribbean – second only to
Charleston, South Carolina throughout the early colonial period.
New York's African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan is the final
resting place of approximately 15,000 free and enslaved
Africans.

9. Black Migration
Around the 1900s, black
residents from Lower
Manhattan and black
migrants from the rural
South and the Caribbean,
began to settle in Harlem.
Three women from Guadeloupe
outside the Ellis Island Immigration
Station.
Collection of William Williams,
Commissioner of Immigration, 1902-
1914. New York Public Library.

10. Chinese Migration
By 1870, there was a
Chinese population of 200
in present-day Chinatown.
By the time the Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882 was
passed, the population
was up to 2,000 residents.
By 1900, there were 7,000
Chinese residents, but
fewer than 200 Chinese
women.
From Illustrated American. New York's
Chinatown celebrating the visit of
Li Hung Chang. (1896)

11. About 22 percent of all Chinese people
today who immigrate to the United States
come to live in New York City.
About one fifth of these immigrants live in
Manhattan's Chinatown.

12. Credit: Fran Simó, Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

13. Little Germany
In the 1870s, New
York's Lower East Side
was known as
Kleindeutschland, or
"Little Germany,” and
would have been the
fifth largest German-
speaking city in the
world.
From Harper’s Magazine. "Das muss
der Palast sein.” (1871)
New York Public Library
Image ID: 833666

14. Between the 1830s and 1890s - 6 million-plus
Germans arrived in the United States. Many kept
up their German language for as long as five
generations.
There were about 800 German newspapers by
the 1880s - four of every five foreign-language
newspapers in the US.

15. Staats-Zeitung
Herman Ridder, GM of
the New York Staats-
Zeitung. [1851-1915]
In the late 1800s, the
German language paper
was one of New York
City’s major daily
newspapers.
It’s still published today.
New York Public Library
Image ID: 2005768

16. Irish Immigrants
Prior to 1830, the Irish
community of New York
City was religiously and
socially diverse.
The potato blight of 1845
brought large numbers of
poor immigrants, often
hungry and sick.

17. Faced with signs reading
"No Irish need apply”—the men took what
manual labor they could get, monopolizing
“unskilled” jobs.
Irish women took in washing or worked as
domestic servants and seamstresses.

18. Some day I'll go
back / words
and music by
Harry Freeman.
[c1899]
First line of song:
Some day I'll go
back to the
country I love.
New York Public Library
Image ID: 1256592

19. Little Italy
More than 3 million
Italians came to America
between 1901 and 1914 -
though these numbers
are misleading because
many of them went back
and forth —and were
recounted each time they
returned.
Italian grandmother at Ellis Island, 1926
New York Public Library Image ID: 212084

20. Group of Italian street laborers, working under Sixth Ave. Elevated, New York City, 1910
New York Public Library Image ID: 464269

21. While going back to Italy and coming back
benefited the American economy by reducing
the number of unemployed during periods of
economic depression—it enraged some
Americans, who saw Italians as dangerous
elements who contributed nothing to the
country.

22. Italian Family. [1895-1905] New York Public Library Image ID: 833692

23. Italians were among those from Southern and
Eastern Europe whose immigration was
restricted by the quotas set in 1924.

24. The Jewish Lower East
Side
The Lower East Side was
a first home for millions
of Jewish immigrants
who immigrated to
America largely between
1881 and 1924.
They came from places
we know today as Russia,
Poland, Ukraine, Belarus,
Lithuania, & Romania.
Jewish grandmother, Ellis Island (1926)
New York Public library, Image ID: 79877

25. They left because of limited economic
opportunities; military service that could last
up to 25 years, during which they could not
maintain their cultural and religious practices;
and due to pogroms, massacres encouraged
by the governments of the countries of origin.

26. Jewish Immigrants
integrated into all levels of
work and commerce. Most,
however, toiled at home and
in factories in the garment
industry, whose center was
New York.
Jewish garment worker, New York City.
(1905-1935, printed 1939)
New York Public Library Image ID: 464289

27. Puerto Ricans: immigrants &
migrants
1860s -1890s: New York was home to
Puerto Rican political exiles working to
emancipate their island from Spain.
After the Spanish American War, the Treaty
of Paris (1898) gave the U.S. colonial
control of PR, Guam and the Philippines.
Puerto Ricans became American citizens
under the Jones Act of 1917.
Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
Afroborinquen historian, writer, activist.

28. Bittman "Bimbo" Rivas
was an actor, activist,
playwright, poet, and
teacher, who gave the
Lower East Side the
name "Loisaida" in a
1974 poem.
He and other influential
artists founded the
Nuyorican Poet’s Café.
Credit: johnwilliamsphd
CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 via Flickr

29. The Lower East Side remains a vibrant community,
home to large Puerto Rican, Dominican and Chinese
communities. While the area has been dealing with
gentrification since the mid-2000s, it continues to
be a site of historic significance, perseverance and
preservation.
Visit the Tenement Museum to learn more about
this iconic American neighborhood and the stories
of immigrants past and present that have shaped
our evolving national identity.

30. Main Sources
Tribes of New York - The Local East Village Blog
http://nyti.ms/13Glsv0
African Burial Ground National Monument, New York City.
www.nps.gov/afbg
New York Public Library Digital Gallery
http://bit.ly/Yxj8pb
Lower Eastside Immigrant Heritage Trail, a project of the Lower East Side
Tenement Museum (covers African, Chinese, German, Irish, Italian, Jewish
and Puerto Rican heritage)
bit.ly/17OZHuM