365 books
—
255 voters
Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.
Start by marking “97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement” as Want to Read:
97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement
by
97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement
Get A Copy
Hardcover, 253 pages
Published
June 1st 2010
by Smithsonian
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Reader Q&A
To ask other readers questions about
97 Orchard,
please sign up.
Recent Questions
This question contains spoilers…
(view spoiler)
Community Reviews
Showing 1-30

Start your review of 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement

One of the things I enjoy about goodreads are the many book challenges offered by groups that allow me to read a wide range of books that I otherwise would not have considered. A popular challenge in a lot of the groups I am in is the A to Z Author Challenge where one reads a book by an author whose last name starts with each letter of the alphabet. For my Z selection I selected 97 Orchard by Jane Zeigelman. Zeigelman is the director of the Kids!Cook program at the New York Tenement House Museum
...more

This book's title is deceptive. There is very little about the five immigrant families in this book. The real focus is on how the arrival of various groups of immigrants influenced and changed the food world of New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The people have little more substance than cardboard figures tucked into the story to illustrate it. And while there is some interesting information about food of the period here, the style is so higgledy- piggledy, jumping from one ...more
The people have little more substance than cardboard figures tucked into the story to illustrate it. And while there is some interesting information about food of the period here, the style is so higgledy- piggledy, jumping from one ...more

For me, the most memorable parts of Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a coming-of-age novel set in the tenements of Brooklyn, involve food. When I think about that book, my mind jumps to the scenes when Francie Nolan buys half-priced stale bread from the bread factory wagons or when Francie’s mother tells her how to get the butcher to supply them with fresh ground beef. Food was important. The good times for Francie’s parents are described when they both had steady jobs and were able to ea
...more

This book was a gift from my wife, who knows that I'm interested in history and, well, food. I wasn't convinced that it was something I really was interested in reading, but I found it fascinating. As some other reviewers have said, don't take the subtitle too seriously - there is little history of the five families who lived in the same tenement building at 97 Orchard Street on the lower east side of New York. Rather, those families serve as representatives of five groups of immigrants - German
...more

My dad picked this book up at a book sale and thought I would enjoy it and he was right. Two years later I'm getting to it, but better late than never! I'm third generation with my family coming through Ellis Island, so this was a fascinating read of five immigrant families who lived in the same tenement building at 97 Orchard Street on the Lower East Side. With a focus on the food they cooked, as well as some of the food changes happening in this country, it was a fascinating historical read! Z
...more

I actually abandoned this book before finishing it because I found it to be uninteresting and not compelling. I expected a history of specific families and their experiences in the tenement and how these related to the food they ate. In this book the notion is more of a gimmick than a historical tale though, and each family history was basically just a venue for presenting a generalized overview of a certain immigrant group and the foods they ate. The information presented was not very surprisin
...more

Potential, potential,potential. The concept here is great. Let's take a story rich concept (tracking immigrant families through a NY tenament over 40 years) and explain their lives and such. On top of that, let's work food in as a primary detail. I'm game. Sounds awesome. The problem is, there's no story here. This is an educational book. This is like going to a museum and reading the placards around the different exhibits. This makes sense to a degree since its tied to 97 Orchard - New York's t
...more

If you mix a people's NYC history from the period of 1890's through 1930's, full of every kind of immigrant with their crazy last names, constant clatter of languages, bustles and suspenders, greasy packs and steamtrunks, and mix that with the smells of knish and streudel, mutton chops and saurkraut, almonds in sugar syrup and gelato, I WILL MOST LIKELY READ YOUR BOOK. Something about that great expectation, enough to spend your last penny to ship your family across the globe for a new beginning
...more

From the culinary curator of the Tenement House Museum in New York, a reconstructed history of the kitchens of five waves of families from 1860-1940--the Glockners (Germans), Moores (Irish), Gumpertzs (German Jews), Rogarshevskys (Polish-Lithuanian Jews) and Baldizzis (Sicilians). The cyclical food history pattern is always there--the immigrants are eating crazy, spicy, strange-smelling food and they should knock it off and quit hanging around with other emigrants in basement restaurants talking
...more

97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement is remarkable not only for its stunningly rich documentation, but for the richness of its unique central idea: an intensive, extensive study of the foodways of European immigrant families who lived in a single tenement building over five decades. Using the building as the setting for her dramatic narrative, author and food historian Jane Ziegelman tells the multilayered, multidimensional stories of German, Irish, J
...more

The author traces five immigrant families -- all of whom lived in the 7 Orchard tenement in New York in the late nineteenth early twentieth century. The reader sees how these families lived and what they ate. In addition you'll be treated to a history of foods that finally made their way to the American palette and stayed there-- foods like pasta, frankfurters, a version of hamburger, pretzels, and many more. In addition I learned about the types of food shops and immigrant run restaurants that
...more

I read this because I visited the Lower East Side Tenement Museum at 97 Orchard last year. Jane Ziegelman is director of a new cooking program at the museum. The book purports to be the story of five families who lived at 97 Orchard: the Glockners, the Gumpertzes, the Moores, the Rogarshevskys, and the Baldizzis. When I visited, I saw the Gumpertz and Balidizzi apartments. Several Goodreads reviewers have commented that the book doesn't really focus on the families in the way that the title impl
...more

This should have been exactly up my alley, being about food history and inspired by one of the best museums in the country (the Tenement Museum in New York), but it bugged me a little. It's hard to say exactly why. I really enjoyed most of it, and I learned a lot about the evolution of ethnic restaurants in NYC and the ways that hot dogs and pastrami and spaghetti were introduced to the American palate through these immigrant communities. There are some recipes included, and they seem manageable
...more

97 ORCHARD is a fun and educational read for even the most casual of foodie. The book discusses life of turn of the century immigrants from the late 1800's to the start of World War I. The typical life of German, Irish, Russian Jew and Italian immigrants are focused on and it is all presented through they eyes of their food. Unquestionably a very unique take on the immigrants story.
The story follows chronologically from the earliest influx of Germans on through the Italian influx leading into th ...more
The story follows chronologically from the earliest influx of Germans on through the Italian influx leading into th ...more

The subtitle is "An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement." Unfortunately, that is not what the book is about. Rather, the author uses 5 families--the amount of info she has on each family can easily be found by a genealogist 30 minutes or less--of different ethnic groups who all lived in one building at some point over a 70-year timespan to frame a basic discussion of different food ways. Irish, German, German Jewish, Eastern European Jewish, and (southern) Italian.
...more

This book is a fascinating and entertaining venture of the culinary experience of living in the tenements over a period of over sixty years and multiple waves of immigrants and nationalities. It covers the German, Irish, German-Jewish, Eastern European Jewish, and Italian waves of immigration.
The Tenement Museum on NYC's Lower East Side is a favorite place of mine, and this book goes incredibly well in tandem with having visited it several times. The book doesn't delve too deeply into the famil ...more
The Tenement Museum on NYC's Lower East Side is a favorite place of mine, and this book goes incredibly well in tandem with having visited it several times. The book doesn't delve too deeply into the famil ...more

The title is deceiving since you think it’s about 5 families yet it’s really a history of food in New York City’s immigrant neighborhoods in the 1850-1930. That’s okay. This was Fascinating. This is a timely read as we are seeing immigrant relations in the news all the time. This gives me some background into Ellis Island although that is only a small part. Mostly it answers the question of what did immigrants in the city eat? How did they live?

I found the chapter on Eastern European Jewish food culture the most interesting, with its discussion of Ellis Island dining halls, the expansion of kosher eating and options on the Lower East Side, the pushcart culture of NY, etc. I'd have liked more on each family, because this is really more a history of five culinary cultures, members of which happened to live in 97 Orchard. Still, quite interesting in places.
...more

This is everything I love about a non-fiction book: history, immigration, family stories, and food. Ziegelman tells the stories of families from Ireland, Germany/Prussia, Russia, and Italy based on records of their arrival, employment, births of children, and residency in a particular tenement building in NYC. Interspersed with photos, vivid descriptions of beer halls, street vendors, markets, and meals, she paints a picture of 19th century Manhattan that brought to life the immigrant experience
...more

I really enjoyed this book although I did find the title a tad misleading. It does mention five individual families but more so follows the larger 'family' of immigrants from their particular country. Nevertheless, I was engrossed and found myself talking about it to anyone who would listen. I am left with one major thought after peeking into the pitiful kitchens and sparse pantries: Women are absolutely amazing and resilient. So often a meal was made out of virtually nothing yet food was presen
...more

97 Orchard barely has anything to do with five specific immigrant families, as the title states, but it does offer an edible history of five immigrant groups in one New York tenement. The book was interesting on many levels; the most basic was seeing how the everyday foods were once so exotic- spaghetti! It's also knowing history to understand the present moment. Immigrants coming for a better life isn't a new phenomenon and our country's dependence on them isn't new either. Immigrants have alwa
...more

Ingenuity abounds in this history of feeding families and the food culture waves of immigration brought to the United States. This was also an eyeopening look (for me) at conditions at Ellis Island while hopeful immigrants waited to be approved for entry into the country at large. I was expecting to feel more engaged with the five families featured, but this really was all about the food. Recipes included!

Through the 19th and 20th century, New York has seen waves of immigrants from various countries. In the 1800s, blocks of apartments known as tenements were developed specifically to house the incoming immigrants. The author concentrates on 5 families that lived at 97 Orchard in New York through the 1800s and early 1900s, and divides the book according to each family of Germans, German Jews, the Irish, Russian Jews and Italians.
These families however, appear rather briefly in each chapter and see ...more
These families however, appear rather briefly in each chapter and see ...more

This book was interesting but a bit uneven in its coverage of five immigrant families who happened to live in one tenement building in New York City. The author just attempts to do too much, tracing the recent history of five cultures, tracking their shared immigration experiences, while also discussing the foodways of those groups - some based on cultural or religious difference, and some based on survival and availability of ingredients. It is true these are all related, but some of the histor
...more

I liked this book quite a bit. One of my favorite books growing up was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, especially the passages about food or lack thereof, and this book covers similar ground in greater depth. I am making turnip latkes and pickled herring salad tomorrow because of the cravings this book inspired.
I do have some real problems with the way the book was constructed. I felt like it was trying to cover too much ground in not enough pages, so it was inevitably disorganized and incomplete. Lot ...more
I do have some real problems with the way the book was constructed. I felt like it was trying to cover too much ground in not enough pages, so it was inevitably disorganized and incomplete. Lot ...more

Feb 08, 2011
Jennifer
rated it
liked it
Recommends it for:
my historian friends
Recommended to Jennifer by:
Ruth
Shelves:
read-2011,
bad-ass-bookclub
This was an interesting but not well-structured discussion of immigration and culinary history, focused on five families (German, Italian, Irish, and both German and Russian Jews) in one New York tenement building (97 Orchard Street, to be exact). The information was fascinating, there were both recipes and many excerpts from 19th century newspapers and cookbooks, and there was lots of discussion about how food was both a way to assimilate but also to maintain culture. Each family gets a chapter
...more

A revelatory immigration culinary culture history using as a weak organizational tool one New York City tenement address, 97 Orchard, and five families who lived there: the Glockners (Germans), Moores (Irish), Gumpertzs (German Jews), Rogarshevskys (Polish-Lithuanian Jews) and Baldizzis (southern Italians). It may be surprising that the families serve only as a representation of their immigration group stories rather than being fully developed.
The book is worthwhile primarily for fascinating ...more
The book is worthwhile primarily for fascinating ...more

While the framework of this book is not very sturdy--the idea of following five families who live in the same building at various points is brilliant, but not utilized to its fullest potential; very little is told about the actual families--the food history of the Lower East Side of New York is fascinating! Through food, we can see the changes in demographics (from the German to Jewish to other ethnicities moving in, such as Italians) as well as the changing customs and mores. Food brought peopl
...more
topics | posts | views | last activity | |
---|---|---|---|---|
r/books: (97 Orchard) Introduction and Chapter One | 2 | 18 | Dec 28, 2013 07:30AM | |
r/books: 97 Orchard Read Schedule! And Eros Philia Agape included! | 1 | 12 | Dec 01, 2013 11:12PM |
Jane Ziegelman is the director of the Tenement Museum's culinary center and the founder and director of Kids Cook!, a multiethnic cooking program for children.
Her writing on food has appeared in numerous publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. ...more
Her writing on food has appeared in numerous publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. ...more
Related Articles
If you follow the world of food, chances are you’ve heard of David Chang. The founder of the Momofuku restaurant group, Chang is a chef, TV...
53 likes · 8 comments
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“The Italians arrived with a strong musical tradition; they also had their faith. But food was their cultural touchstone, their way of defying the critics, of tolerating the slurs and all of the other injustices. It was their way of being Italian.”
—
0 likes
“For Americans who believed that Italians subsisted on bread and macaroni, the edible delights available in the downtown restaurants came as a revelation.”
—
0 likes
More quotes…