A Deep Dive Highlight: Immersed in Immigration

After some discussion with Head of the Upper School Daisy Savage and Director of Curriculum and Faculty Development Chris Weaver, she was determined to not only create a link to her curriculum using the city but also institute a new sixth-grade history field trip.

 

A major unit of instruction in sixth-grade history covers modern history from the Industrial Revolution (and its origin in England) to WWII. The spread of industrialization to the United States, the influx of immigrants in the late 1800s to the 1930s, and the strong connection NYC has to immigration provided rich context for Longenecker’s Deep Dive as she set herself to devising an immersive experience for students studying the industrial era.

 

She set about exploring the city through the lens of immigration. She visited Ellis Island. She participated in several Big Onion Walking Tours, including one based on the movie Gangs of New York by Martin Scorsese, and a multi-ethnic food tour. She took a special VIP tour of NYC’s first steel skyscraper—the Woolworth Building—conducted by the architect’s granddaughter. The tour afforded her the opportunity to see features of the building and a defunct basement subway station that the general public cannot normally access.

 

Longenecker took a self-guided tour of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, site of one of our nation’s worst industrial accidents in 1911. She visited a historic pickling factory and plumbed Little Italy and Chinatown for ideas. She visited the Botanical Gardens, site of the Lorillard Snuff Mill (the oldest factory in New York City; now known as the Lillian and Amy Goldman Stone Mill) as well as the old Carnegie Mansion on East 91st Street.

 

Ultimately, her greatest find, as it relates to her curriculum and her idea of the new field trip, was the Tenement Museum on the historic Orchard Street on the Lower East Side. “At the Tenement Museum students can make a tangible connection to what life was like as industrialism began in the U.S .and new buildings were designed to house a booming working class. Immigration and Industrialization are interwoven at the turn of the century,” said Longenecker.

Longenecker spent an entire day examining photos and touring. The museum inhabits an old apartment building that was purchased by the city in the 1980s. Prior to its purchase, the apartments in the building have remained vacant since 1930. (That year, its residents were evicted because the structure could not pass increasingly stringent fire codes and the landlord refused to renovate.)

 

There are four themed tours offered at the museum and Longenecker took them all. “Because the building was rapidly vacated and remained empty, it served as somewhat of a time capsule,” said Sue. “One room had preserved 20 layers of wallpaper and another 12 layers of flooring. The original heating pipes were exposed as were many original coal stoves.”

 

The Tenement Museum has reconstructed a variety of rooms to represent various timeframes illustrating tenement living at the turn of the century. There is also an onsite classroom and an educational movie on offer. A visit to the museum will become a new sixth-grade field trip coupled with another to-be-determined connection to immigration and industrialization in New York City.

 

Longenecker will be taking more immigrant walking tours and looking for additional ideas to build upon the day for students. She will participate in a New York Historical Society workshop entitled “American Women at Work” and professional development on industrialization. Throughout her Deep Dive into New York City in the Industrial Age, she has also been exploring connections and examining the history curriculum at other schools in the area to make sure Peck’s sixth-grade history curriculum is the best in the area, and our students are fully immersed and tangibly engaged in learning about the past and its relevance to the present.