These photographs were taken by Inspectors of the New York City Tenement House Department, 1902-1914. The buildings featured were on Orchard Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It’s been given a make-over in recent times, gentrified, if you will, a term that comes more loaded than George Bush at a frat house party. But it wasn’t great back then. Yuppies, Hipsters and all other newly arrived tribes who demand indoor plumbing, designer shmata, expensive protein, a road that doesn’t liquidise in snow, rain and heat, and the best of everything should appreciate how the area has altered in little over a century. Not all modernisation is regrettable.
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