Tonight is the housewarming party, so to speak, for the Tenement Museum's new apartment and the opening of its first tour since 2002. This one is titled, The Moores: An Irish Family in America. They tell us that "it’s taken about 6 years from concept to completion for this particular project. That includes research, planning, fundraising, designing, bringing the upper floors up to code, purchasing artifacts for the apartment, developing content." Like their other apartments,......

Costumed performers and tour guides are fighting for unionization at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where they work to recreate the squalid living conditions of turn-of-the-century Jewish immigrants, the very group that was integral to 20th century unionization efforts. Dozens of the tenement employees protested last night outside a fundraiser for the museum at Chelsea Piers. Most of the guides work part time for an average $17 per hour, with no regular pay increases,......

BENEFIT: Tonight catch a special performance by Alanis Morissette, while rubbing elbows with Matt Dillon...all for a good cause! The inaugural fundraising benefit for the Adrienne Shelly Foundation will be held this evening, and you can get in with a ticket from $150 to...well, $10,000 bucks. You'll be supporting the late Shelly's foundation which "supports the artistic achievements of female actors, writers and directors through a series of scholarships and grants." 6pm // Skirball Center......

The NY Sun takes a look at the impact of graphic design firm Pentagram on the city’s arts institutions. The article focuses mostly on partner Paula Scher, who has created identities for the Public Theater, the Metropolitan Opera, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, the High Line, the Asia Society and a host of others. Scher, who designed the original “Boston” album in 1976, is now designing for the Park Avenue Armory and Drill Hall,......

What does NY need? Another historic district, of course! Downtown Express is reporting that Community Board 3 has finally voted in favor of the Lower East Side Historic District, a proposed 20-block area that comprises 450 buildings from East Houston to Canal and from Allen to Essex streets. Officials at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum have been vocal proponents of the district, which has been pushed forward by the Lower East Side Preservation......

EVENT: The New York Book Club at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum presents…"Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered New York City". The panelists include "Hal Buell, longtime AP photo editor who put images of the Vietnam War in newspapers across America; Richard Drew, AP photographer who has covered New York events including 9/11; Edie Lederer, longtime UN correspondent and first woman to be the foreign chief of bureau; and Valerie Komor, corporate......

EVENT: Together, the New York Book Club and the Gotham Center present "Resistance: A Radical History of the Lower East Side," with Michael Rosen, Al Orensanz, Jay Blotcher, and moderator Clayton Patterson. They'll tell you all about how the LES "experienced massive changes during the 1980s and 90s," including stories from the activists, writers, artists, and residents who lived it. More info here. 6pm // LES Tenement Museum [108 Orchard St] // Free MUSIC: Tonight......

Workers crammed into small spaces and contending with oppressive heat on the Lower East Side. Thank goodness for the labor movement of the early 20th Century. Or are the very people who commemorate those days enduring the same conditions? The Villager reports that workers at The Lower East Side Tenemant Museum are taking a page out of their own history books and forming a union. Their complaints include extreme temperatures and cramped workspaces. They want......

+ Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: "Large Fight in Front Of Firehouse" at 12:02pm on 58th Street and a huge fire at the Memorial Presbyterian Church on 7th and St. Johns in Park Slope. + The Villager has a nice history of the L.E.S. Tenement Museum: "Built in 1863, with 20 apartments measuring approximately 325 square feet each and no indoor plumbing, ventilation or light, 97 Orchard St. was home to an estimated 7,000......

If you didn't see the NY Times article about Isabel Chang's web project to mapping and documenting houses of worship in Chinatown, definitely check it out. And see the project itself - The Gods of Chinatown. Sponsored by the Tenement Museum, the site is a tour of different temples, but it's more than a tour. Chang share her journey (as she started going to temples when she was depressed), explains what certain things at......

The guys at Transportation Alternatives ran their annual Bike Month NYC commuter race, in which a cab, biker, and pedestrian attempt to get from Brooklyn into Manhattan in the quickest possible time. Last year, the biker got from Juniors on Flatbush Avenue to Columbus Circle in just 27 minutes, beating the subway-rider by three minutes and the cab by 18 minutes. This year's race was from Grand Army Plaza in Park Slope to the......

Have you ever found yourself walking in the Lower East Side at night thinking 'Geez, I hope this neighborhood looks exactly like this forever?" Well, it seems that you aren't the only one. Thanks to the efforts of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum at least some of it might never change a bit. The museum, despite vocal opposition among many property owners in the area, has asked Community Board 3 for assisstance in......

We are sick of winter. Even if it is not that cold, we're sick of all the seasonal things- the layering of clothes, the sneezing in public, the lack of roof bars. Seriously. We miss the drinking plus art of the Met roof garden, we miss the fake fronds, the fake everything really on the roof of the Delancey. But, mostly, we miss that drinking in that rare, only sometimes available space is an option.......

This is so much cooler than your average maps mashup! The Tenement Museum has put together an amazing soundmap of the Lower East Side-- you position the white circles over the various colored dots to create a mix of up to five sound streams. They've got ambient noise (fire hydrants, traffic, music from ice cream vans), folk music, and interviews with people on the streets. It's compulsively fun to play with-- probably best to......

Allison Bowles, Student...

If you dined at Tenement on Ludlow Street the past two months and paid by credit card, check your statements. The NY Post reports that a waitress was arrested after stealing the credit card information of at least 37 customers. The police say Dominika Szymanska "used a 'skimmer' — a hand-held mechanical embossing device — to make copies of the diners' credit cards" between March and May. Crazy! Gothamist would say pay cash, but when......

Every week art is freshly hung or taken down from the walls somewhere in this city. This week Gothamist suggests you check out these openings & closings... OPENING June 10th @ LEHMANN MAUPIN 540 WEST 26TH STREET ELIEZER SONNENSCHEIN Untitled, 2004 Artists from Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv 10 June - 30 July 2004 Opening Reception Thursday, 10 June 2004, 6-8 PM The exhibition will be a significant opportunity to expose New York audiences to......

I've been feeling less positive about the Tenement Museum since they tried to kick those people out of their apartments on Orchard Street to expand the museum. Still, it is an important resource for the neighborhood.......