Tenement Museum Relaunches Walking Tours, but Indoor Programs Still on Hold
While larger museums and cultural institutions around the city are reopening after a pandemic-induced sidelining, here on the Lower East Side, the Tenement Museum will remain dark.
No indoor programming at 97 Orchard Street for the foreseeable future. Historically appropriate, in a sense. Tenements were harbingers of disease throughout the generations due to overcrowding small spaces. Filling these same small spaces with tours revives those concerns.
“With the health and safety of our staff and visitors our first priority, we remain in the planning phase for a return to in-building visitation,” the museum said in a recent mailer.
In the meantime, the Tenement Museum will soon welcome visitors for the first time since last March. Through its slate of walking tours. These outdoor tours – beginning September 12 – are the first of the museum’s popular programs to relaunch, the first step in a larger plan to bring back visitors over the next year.
It’s not completely lost time, though. During this hiatus, the museum will embark on a stabilization project of its building at 97 Orchard Street.
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