Our new place is very small and humble, but the neighborhood is amazing and the price is right. I really enjoy the fact that the building was built in the 1800's, and represents a piece of old New York.
The best museum experience I ever had in New York City was the tour given by a historical re-enactor at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. She pretended that the members of our tour were new immigrants, fresh of the boat in 1916, and she showed us around her "New World" apartment. You can see the video of this experience by clicking on the title of this blog post.
As the last old-fashioned apartment building preserved without modifications required by new building codes, the Tenement Museum shows us how New Yorkers lived at the turn of the century. Starting in May I won't have to visit the Tenement Museum, I will basically live there. It is hard to explain why I find this such an exciting prospect. The new apartment is tiny, unrenovated and very basic.
My father's family moved to New York City in the early 1800's and we have been here ever since, for seven generations. My feelings about the "new" apartment were perfectly summarized by the recent New York magazine article on our city's best neighborhoods. The Lower East Side, our new 'hood, ranked second on the list of most desirable places to live. The magazine commented that it was, until recently, "a memory" but is now drawing hip young people with its great, reasonable restaurants, cutting edge boutiques and nightlife.
For many whose families came from Europe to New York in the 1800's, the Lower East Side is a place of inherited cultural memories. In trying to find interior photos of apartments similar to my new, humble swap home, I realized why I am so excited about this move. Entering the address to which we are moving brought up historical photos of apartments in that very building. The most striking showed an immigrant family circa 1910, sewing "piece work" in their home/sweat shop. Perhaps they were sitting in the same room we will soon inhabit.
Our new apartment is an authentic part of New York City history. It is old, but it has a patina of "real New York" to it that could make for a much more interesting vacation than any hotel room could offer the traveler.
The echoes of over a century of footsteps on the wide, plank floors of our new apartment, and the neighborhood's cultural riches, are what enticed me to move my family to a place just a fraction of the size of where we now live. Swappers may not hear the same reverberations. I plan to spotlight the "old New World" charm of the place by decorating it with antique sheet music from that era, and providing lots of information on the neighborhood's important history as the first stop for many new immigrants.
Time will tell if exchangers groove on the place the way I do. For a discerning few, our humble swap home may be a more interesting experience of cultural immersion than fancy new construction could ever hope to be.
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