‘The Real Housewives of Henry Street’

Audience members help Jane Ziegelman stretch dough for a strudel made according to an old recipe at the 'Real Housewives of Henry Street, 1905' event at the Henry Street Settlement on Sept. 25. (Ivan Pentchoukov/The Epoch Times)

NEW YORK—About a hundred years ago you could save half a penny by buying a broken egg. Crack it open, drop into a cup, sniff to check if it is still good, and be on your way.

The bustling pushcart markets on the Lower East Side fed the poorest New Yorkers and the most crowded neighborhood in the city, one egg, stalk of celery, and half a turnip at a time.

Those who visited from uptown were shocked at the local shopping habits. Housewives would go out and buy just enough food for a single meal. They shopped three times a day. In the absence of refrigerators, they used the pushcarts as their pantry. In this overcrowded and poverty-stricken place, the Henry Street Settlement opened its doors.

In 1893, Lillian Wald settled at 265 Henry St. to care for poor children and families. A century later, the city still struggles with poverty. The city’s poverty rate is over 20 percent—5 percent higher than the national average, according to data released by the Census Bureau last week.

Over the past century, the Henry Street Settlement has grown to 17 sites. It provides meals, housing assistance, education, and health care to more than 50,000 people every year.

On Sunday, the Henry Street Settlement hosted “The Real Housewives of Henry Street, 1905,” an event that explored in detail how women made it through their daily lives on the Lower East Side one hundred years ago.

Among the presenters at the event was Jane Ziegelman, author of “97 Orchard Street.” Her book is named after a typical Lower East Side tenement house and focuses on the people who called it home.

“They were brash, they were savvy, and, basically, they were unstoppable,” Ziegelman said of the housewives of that era.

Tenement buildings like 97 Orchard St. offered families apartments averaging about 320 square feet. The tiny spaces were divided into a parlor, a kitchen, and a bedroom.

For many years, the buildings had no running water; women lugged buckets up the stairs. In the winter, the hallways were freezing cold. In the summer, the poorly ventilated buildings became unbearably hot. Families used fire escapes and rooftops as a refuge from the heat.

Women made do with the bare minimum in the tiny kitchens of the tenement houses. Despite the limitations, however, some of the foods many hold dear to this day were prepared in these tight spaces, and with the simplest tools—a pan, a knife, a cutting board, and a box grater.

Food was what connected Sunday’s event with the housewives from a century ago.

Ziegelman brought dough, a container of sliced pears, and a few table cloths—all that is necessary to make a strudel. With the help of a few volunteers from the audience, the small ball of dough was stretched to a formidably sized sheet. To demonstrate the ingenuity of the housewives of the past, Ziegelman used pieces of cloth to wrap the delicate dough around the pears. The audience clapped and cheered.

“The real housewives of Henry Street worked their culinary magic from the most humble materials,” Ziegelman said.

Such magic may have been necessary at that time, as no government programs existed to cushion those who fell through the cracks. Before food stamps, Medicare, and housing programs, Henry Street Settlement was there to fill the gap.

“I refer to the work as emptying the ocean of poverty with a thimble,” said David Garza, executive director of the Henry Street Settlement. “Sometimes it’s very consistent with the way it feels to do this work, but on the flip side, there is no more valuable, more meaningful, more profoundly significant work to do.”