Page 95 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - New York City

L OWER EAST SIDE  93

among four families. Tenements
also lacked any electricity,
plumbing, or heating.
Visitors can also go on
two-hour walking tours of
the neigh borhood. Tickets
are available at the nearby
visitor center, where an
introductory video offers
insight into the tours. There
is also a great bookshop.

q Orchard Street
Map 5 A3. q Delancey, Grand St.
See Shopping p314.
Jewish immigrants founded
the New York garment industry
on this street, named for the
orchards that once stood here
on James De Lancey’s Colonial
estate. For years the street was
filled with pushcarts loaded
with goods for sale. The
pushcarts are long gone,
and few of the shopkeepers
are Jewish, but the flavor
remains. On Sunday there is
an outdoor market, and
shoppers fill the street from
Houston to Canal, looking Shoppers walking along Orchard Street
for clothing bargains.
Orchard Street is also at are added, and the shop e Bialystoker
the heart of the Lower East operates to strict Kosher rules. Synagogue
Side’s gentrification. Popular The store also carries pickled
boutiques and vintage stores tomatoes, pickled celery, olives, 7–11 Willett St. Map 5 C4.
nestle along side bars, clubs, mushrooms, hot peppers, Tel (212) 475-0165. q Essex St.
restaurants, and the boutique sun-dried tomatoes, sweet u frequent services.
Blue Moon Hotel, formerly kraut, sauerkraut, and herring. 8 7–10am Mon–Thu (call in
advance). ∑ bialystoker.org
a tenement. It is run like a family business,
with a friendly, chatty atmos-
phere, which perpetuates This 1826 Federal-style
w The Pickle Guys the neighborhood’s traditions. building was originally the
Willett Street Methodist
49 Essex St. Map 5 B4. Tel (212) 656-
9739. q Grand St. Open 9am–6pm Church. It was bought in
Sun–Thu, 9am–4pm Fri. 1905 by Jewish immigrants
∑ pickleguys.com from the Bialystok province
of Poland, who converted
The scent of pickles permeates it into a synagogue.
this little section of Essex The synagogue has a
Street, just as it did in the early beautiful interior, with lovely
1900s, when Jewish pickle stained-glass windows, a
shops filled the area. True three-story carved wooden
to the old Eastern European ark, and murals representing
recipe, The Pickle Guys store views of the Holy Land and
their pickles in barrels filled the signs of the zodiac,
with brine, garlic, and spices; including an interesting
this mixture preserves the oddity: a lobster meant to
pickles for months on end. represent Cancer, the crab.
Pickle varieties include full There is also a memorial plaque
sour, three-quarters sour, to the infamous mobster
half sour, new, and hot. Barrels and cans of various pickles at Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, who
No chemicals or preservatives The Pickle Guys prayed here as a child.

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