My great-grand uncle Joseph Jacobs (1864-1918) was born in Lithuania and became a naturalized citizen in New York City in 1888. He (and his sister Tillie and his mother Rachel) all lived in tenements after coming to the Big Apple in the mid-1880s.
When Joe became a US citizen in October of 1888, his address was 49 Clinton Street, on Manhattan's Lower East Side, an area crammed with immigrants living in row after row of attached tenements. Many of those tenements are now gone. What about Joe's place?
49 Clinton Street, circa 1940
I used Steve Morse's One-Step tool to quickly and conveniently search the NYC Records & Information Department database of building photos taken for tax purposes, 1939-1941. I wondered whether Joe's tenement was still standing in about 1940.
Shown above is the search form, completed to show the address I was seeking. I specified the year as 1939-1941, selected Manhattan as the borough, and entered the house number "49" and the street "Clinton." Then I clicked to show block and lot, and finally clicked "display single house." The black and white tax photo is at top of this blog post, tenements with stores at street level. The full page of results is here.
Alas, I may not be looking at Joe's actual residence but a replacement. His original residence could very well have been torn down to make way for taller buildings. Current real estate listings for the address suggest the tenement shown at top was built about 1910.
If you're looking for a New York City address from the past, try the Steve Morse search form and also check Google for info about the current status of the building.
49 Clinton Street, circa 2024
Then I pasted the address "49 Clinton Street, New York City" into the Google search box. Up popped a map and a street-level photo.
Surprisingly, the tenement is still standing and recognizable, as shown by this photo from September of 2024! Fire escapes and stores at street level, similar to the 1940 photo.
Remembering my immigrant ancestor Joe Jacobs on the 106th anniversary of his death in 1918.
