Restored 1863 Irish Tenement Apartment

The Tenement Museum has recently opened it's first restored tenement since 2002. It is called, The Moores: An Irish Family in America. The museum spent six years tracking down artifacts to furnish the apartment, designing, researching, and restoring. The family who lived at 97 Orchard Street was one of the few Irish families in what was at the time a German neighborhood. They resided their in 1869, and the couple had three daughters.

Do you think the restoration was a success? I'm not sure their space would have been quite so organized and "designed." I imagine Mr. Moore made little pay and was faced with many hardships, including the death of his young daughter from a form of malnutrition.


The parlor painted in Sky-blue calcimine

A wide parlor-view and mantle piece

The parlor writing area

...looks like the kitchen got fairly good light!

Another area of the kitchen

The Tenement Museum always leaves an "area of record," leaving an area of the tenement as they originally found it. Here you can see layers of peeling wallpaper and paint.


Artifacts found during the restorations

An original lantern still hangs

The apartment before any restoration began

A view of the damage that's occurred overtime. There was no electricity.

The original banister dating from 1863

For more photos, go to the Tenement Museum's Flickr page

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