Annotation:A study guide to the history of the Lower East Side using prints, photographs, maps, and excerpts from manuscripts drawn from the collections of the New York Public Library. These resources are organized into themes that reflect historical moments associated with the Lower East Side. A sequence of leveled questions is provided for every source in the guide.

Annotation:On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City caught fire. The doors were locked to ensure workers stay inside. One hundred forty-six people perished—mostly Jewish and Italian women.This book, published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the fire, examines the circumstances surrounding the disaster, failed attempts to organize workers, and changes in labor practices enacted as a result of the tragedy.

Annotation:Chronicles the development of the Lower East Side from Manhattan’s first settlers, as an immigrant haven, and on to affluent gentrification. Highlights hidden gems of the Lower East Side’s immigrant past. Includes 5 self-guided walking tours.

Annotation:Uses historic and modern images to show how New York's Chinese communities have grown uninterruptedly from three streets in lower Manhattan to five Chinatowns, over 100 street blocks, across the boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn.

Annotation:A critical examination of the construction, alteration, and occupancy of 97 Orchard Street as a primary document for understanding the nature of tenement design and tenement life in New York City.

Annotation:Examines the defining role of the Yiddish socialist movement in the American Jewish experience during four decades of mass migration to New York.

Annotation:Explores the ways in which Jewish girls' adolescent experiences reflected gender, ethnicity, religion, and education issues in the American immigrant community. Discusses their dual role as agents of acculturation and guardians of tradition. Based on girls’ papers, letters, and diaries.

Annotation:A short pictographic history of downtown Manhattan’s Little Italy, the area from the Lower East Side of Manhattan straddling Canal Street. The author covers the first influx of Italian political and religious refugees in the early 1800s through established settlement and growth of Little Italy in the 1870s and 80s in words and pictures. Chapters dedicated to food, religion, commerce, and entertainment.

Annotation:The stories of the lives of the members of four immigrant families at 97 Orchard Street. Told and shown via archival materials from the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and complemented by photos of the restored 97 Orchard.

Annotation:A guide to the history of New York organized by streets address, including the anecdotes and historical events connected to each street. The first half of the guide coverers the Battery North to 14th Street.

Annotation:Describes the physical structure of the 67 Carnegie-funded libraries in New York City. Photos and architectural description of Seward Park Library (p. 18, p. 24, pp. 163-4); Hamilton Fish Park Library (9pp. 136-7); Chatham Square Library (p. 22, pp. 126-7); Tompkins Square Library (pp. 167-8).

Annotation:Bella Spewack (1899-1990) was born in Transylvania at the turn of the 20th century and arrived on the streets of New York's Lower East Side when she was three. The young Bella describes the sights and sounds of her neighborhood, and introduces a wide array of people as her family moves annually to save rent or find a still cheaper apartment.

Annotation:An expose of the lives of recent Chinese immigrants in New York’s insular and enigmatic Chinatown. Through interviews, gives accounts of their extended family obligations, work ethic, attitude toward money, gangs, traditions of concubinage, the importance of food, and the challenges of assimilation and racism.

Annotation:A guide to the Lower East Side in two sections: a do-ityourself walking tour with corresponding stops on a street map, and a guide to shopping on the Lower East Side.