For more than two decades, the Tenement Museum has fulfilled its mission to make tangible the profound role immigration plays in shaping American identity. The museum forges powerful emotional connections between visitors and immigrants past and present, and unforgettably evokes the history of immigration on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, America’s iconic immigrant neighborhood. Two historic tenements on Orchard Street, home to an estimated 15,000 people from more than 20 nations between 1863 and 2000, represent the heart of the museum. Visitors view restored apartments and retail spaces in the buildings, explore the surrounding neighborhood's history and culture, and experience how immigrants weathered hard times and built new lives.

One of the fastest growing cultural institutions in New York City, the Tenement Museum will welcome more than 225,000 visitors this year. Many young visitors are living the immigrant experience right now, and come away with an inspiring sense that their families, too, are making history.As an ongoing research project, the Tenement Museum makes significant contributions to urban, social, and architectural history and is a cultural anchor and economic engine for the Lower East Side

The Tenement Museum’s core programming includes more than 12 different tours of 97 Orchard Street and the Lower East Side that vividly convey immigrant experiences. Personal stories of immigrant families allow visitors to encounter immigration as an essential force in shaping this country and to absorb how much our open society, democratic institutions, cultural creativity, and economic vitality owe to our experience as a nation of immigrants.

In its recently acquired tenement at 103 Orchard Street, the Tenement Museum is recreating the homes of Holocaust survivors, Puerto Rican migrants, and Chinese immigrants. This expansion will enable the Museum to explore the end of the quota system and the nation’s return to historic American ideals in admitting immigrants.

The Tenement Museum is an affiliate site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.