Keep Exploring Architizer by Creating a Free Account or Logging in.

This feature is for industry professionals.  To unlock it, signup and then join or add your company. To unlock this feature,  signup and then submit your professional details.

Membership is Free.

LinkedIn Facebook Google
or
Already a Member? Sign in.
Add To Collection Add to Collection
Tenement Museum  

Tenement Museum

New York, NY, United States

Finalist, 2018 A+Awards, Concepts - Plus - Architecture +Preservation
Project Featured on Oct 29, 2018
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection
View Original View Original
Add To Collection Add to Collection

Other Projects by Perkins Eastman

Add To Collection Add to Collection

Boston Arts Academy

Add To Collection Add to Collection

Benjamin Banneker Academic High School

Add To Collection Add to Collection

John Lewis Elementary School

Add To Collection Add to Collection

District Wharf

Add To Collection Add to Collection

The Container Globe

Add To Collection Add to Collection

Onassis Cultural Center Renovation

Add To Collection Add to Collection

BBC Worldwide Americas Inc.

Add To Collection Add to Collection

Manhattan College

Add To Collection Add to Collection

The New York Wheel

Add To Collection Add to Collection

Huishan North Bund

Add To Collection Add to Collection

Dunbar Senior High School

Add To Collection Add to Collection

the Quin

Add To Collection Add to Collection

Deanwood Community Center and Library

Add To Collection Add to Collection

Indian School of Business: Mohali Campus

Add To Collection Add to Collection

Huizhou Huamao Center

Add To Collection Add to Collection

Avenues: The World School New York

Add To Collection Add to Collection

Porter Street Residences

Add To Collection Add to Collection

Lower East Side Tenement Museum Visitors' Center

Add To Collection Add to Collection

Kumkang Penterium IT Tower

Tenement Museum

New York, NY, United States

Finalist, 2018 A+Awards, Concepts - Plus - Architecture +Preservation
Project Featured on Oct 29, 2018
Type
STATUS
Built
YEAR
2018
SIZE
25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqft
The Tenement Museum tells the story of American immigration through the personal accounts of immigrant families, framing immigration as an essential force in shaping the culture, economy, and society of the nation and NYC. Perkins Eastman has been working as a design partner to the Museum for more than ten years, helping it create an urban campus, increase its prominence within the city, and, particularly within the growth and cultural changes of Lower Manhattan, realize its mission of becoming a unique community and civic resource. It is now regarded as one of the top cultural destinations in the city.

The non-profit museum tells the story of immigration to the US through the extant building fabric of preserved tenement buildings in America’s iconic immigrant neighborhood. Now a (living, breathing) National Historic Site, the Museum reveals the stories of nearly 20,000 people who lived and worked in tenement buildings on Orchard Street in the late 19th century through the 1970s through:

• a forensic exploration of immigrant life as excavated in the now-restored apartment of an Irish family from the 1860s;
• a basement-level exhibition examining tenement commercial life;
• the renovation of the lower floors at 103 Orchard Street into the new visitor and education center for the museum; and
• the stitching together of three separate but connected deteriorating tenement buildings to create an invisible architectural backdrop for the Museum’s new permanent exhibit on modern immigration.

This latest phase provides new exhibit areas and much-needed support spaces for Museum staff. “Under One Roof” is the Museum’s first to bring the American immigration story into the modern era, telling the stories of three families—Polish refugees who survived the Holocaust (Epstein family), Puerto Rican migrants (Saez family), and Chinese immigrants (Wong family)—who lived at 103 Orchard Street.

The design deliberately retains and showcases the existing buildings in the redesign so the architecture can also serve as a teaching tool that contributes to the Museum’s mission. This means common features like air shafts—the “lungs” of the tenements, which back then echoed with Yiddish, German, Spanish, Italian, and Irish voices—have become connections between the three tenements stitched together and are left raw and unfinished; and corridors and stairwells—relocated to accommodate the program spread across the three buildings—showcase uneven, crumbling layers of plaster, mortar, brick, and paint. This is a time capsule revealed—experiential architecture that mines the past to allow lessons for the future.

At the same time, sensitive interventions to the building fabric enhance the environment for museum-goers and staff.
Judicious use of glass wherever possible; a skylight inserted in the conference room directing natural light down a new internal communicating stair which filters light throughout the administrative floors; crisp lighting; smart furniture systems; and unobtrusive “new” moments intermingle with elements and conditions literally from another era to produce an environment authentically NYC—old and new, at once, and where the behind-the-scenes is equally compelling.

The Tenement Museum corroborates the grand experiment that is America and undeniably NYC. Mining the past to impart lessons for the future, Perkins Eastman’s backstage approach to the design of the Tenement Museum brings its rich and vital history to life, enabling the existing architecture to tell its story also while examining the role that history and museums can play in our lives.

Credits:
- Tenement Museum - Client

Product Spec Sheet

Were your products used?
Join as a manufacturer to add your products.

Collaborating Firms

MEP/FP Engineers

Team

Articles