I don’t know exactly when this postcard was created or even what street it depicts. Rivington or Stanton are my guesses.
What’s remarkable is that the Lower East Side of the turn of the last century was commonly known as “The Ghetto”—a term that today sounds so loaded and inflammatory, though back then may have simply described the heavily Jewish part of any large American or European city.
Tags: " shopping on the Lower East Side, " vintage postcards of New York City, "The Ghetto—Market Day, Jewish Ghetto, Lower East Side ghetto, Lower East Side Street, New York City ghetto, The Ghetto
Ephemeral New York 
July 20, 2011 at 2:53 am |
A view of Hester Street, looking west from, but not showing, Norfolk. The entire block facing Hester (ending at the 3-story white building at the corner of Essex) would in several years become the gargantuan P.S. 62.
Drawn from a photograph (c. 1898) by the Byron Company. Find it at Museum of the City of New York’s site; their “accession number” for the shot is 93.1.1.15379
“Ghetto” wasn’t, strictly — or even loosely — speaking, the proper term for the neighborhood, as many contemporaries were well aware. But it stuck for some time, and was probably at high water at the time of the photo.
July 20, 2011 at 1:08 pm |
I’ll take T.J.’s word for it, but my first reaction was that I didn’t see anybody (or anything) in the picture that seemed distinctly Jewish. In fact, I was leaning toward thinking it was an Italian neighborhood. Unless it’s a particularly homely woman, the guy in red on the extreme left of the frame looks like Catholic clergy to me.
July 20, 2011 at 1:56 pm |
Thanks TJ and Nathan. I too wasn’t sure it was a Jewish ghetto–but other documents and photos at the time seemed to use that word specifically to describe Jewish enclaves on the LES. But maybe it had a broader meaning?