Urban Archive + Museum at Eldridge Street
Schools and museums might still be closed, but learning is open.
Here at Urban Archive, we love discovering all the ways that our partners and users bring history to life on our platform. The closure of schools and museums amid the COVID-19 pandemic has only brought about creative new uses, particularly in remote classrooms.
Our friends at the Museum at Eldridge Street have been at the forefront of this thinking with their “Learning from Home” initiative. Part of the initiative leans into Urban Archive’s story-mapping capabilities to compel young learners to explore neighborhoods and primary sources. Rather than hosting in-person tours for students, the Museum has been developing stories on Urban Archive that showcase the Lower East Side’s unique Jewish heritage with images of businesses, synagogues, public gathering spaces, and more. This story prompts students to look for signs of immigrant Jewish life still abound in their neighborhood utilizing archives sourced from different museums and libraries in the city.
Following Their Footprints tells about the lives of the congregants of the former Eldridge Street synagogue, which now houses the museum. This story is quick to point out that the Lower East Side was the most densely populated neighborhood in the world, and gets students to imagine what it was like to live there during that time using images from the era.
Using primary sources, the Museum at Eldridge Street prompts students to think about how history happened in the places they live or study. Learners are asked questions like, “Think About It: What types of challenges do you think families faced living inside these tenements?” or given an opportunity to dig into the Forward’s “Bintel Brief,” a newspaper column “designed to help immigrants navigate the challenges and identity that new immigrants faced.” Primary documents and first-hand records set the stage for a deeper understanding of history, particularly as students explore their own relationship to images on the map.
Newspaper articles, government reports and letters are all important primary sources, but photographs are among the most fun to examine. They provide visual evidence of a time period or event that can expand your historical understanding — and help you really picture what life was like back then.
This format enables students to digest photos and sources at their own pace, and consider how they relate to their own surroundings and connect them with the present.
We hope that this collaboration connects learners with first-hand accounts of history and, furthermore, we hope this inspires you! If you’re interested in using Urban Archive in your classroom, hear from you. Tag us on Twitter @urbanarchiveny or email us at team@urbanarchive.nyc. You can also check out our list of resources and activities for students here.
