London’s ‘tenement museum’ opens in Hackney

We’re all a little bit James Stewart in Rear Window, hoping for a nose into peoples’ daily lives and at the Museum of the Home that’s exactly what’s on offer. (For free.) An important piece of social history, the museum aims to rethink and improve the ways we live and has curated a new selection of period homes reflecting the stories of the East London community, including a 1913 Jewish tenement flat.

As with any renovation, it’s all in the planning: from bedrooms and bathrooms to kitchens and gardens, the curators have taken on board visitor feedback ensuring a more immersive experience allowing you to truly become ‘part of the furniture’ – sitting on actual sofas within the exhibits, looking through windows, plus the firm favourite: interactive button-pushing and handle-turning.

The museum underwent some renovation works in 2021 and when it reopened, it redressed the 1740s period room to show a Jewish Sephardi household celebrating Chanukah – the museum’s the first representation of a Jewish household. This was a temporary display which has now been repeated each winter, welcoming families who had never been to the museum before let alone celebrated Chanukah. (Who doesn’t love a free doughnut?)

The tenement buildings were a solution to Victorian London’s housing problem, inhabited by poor but respectable Eastern European Jewish migrants. Whilst old photographs allowed accuracy for large-scale prints of the building façade, less was known about the interior.

Research and content lead for the overall project and curator for the tenement room, Louis Platman, says: “We held research sessions with Jewish community groups, including a 99-year-old man with a photographic memory of his flat in the East End Rothschild Buildings, from which we took a huge amount of inspiration. We really wanted to get things right (for all of the rooms), by engaging with visitors and working with community partners who had lived experiences of the block. The space has been officially rubber-stamped by those who knew the space from the inside, with many comments of ‘I remember that!’. It was an interesting aesthetic to curate – getting that balance between a home that would seem poor to our modern eyes, but of which the people living there at the time would have been immensely proud (they even had indoor toilets!).”

Louis has a personal affection for the tenement. “I share a similar heritage as my family came over from Poland in the early 1900s and settled in the East End so it was interesting delving deeper into my family history. I even managed to sneak a family photo onto the walls.”

In a time where toilet roll wasn’t affordable, it’s the little details of ripped up newspaper as a substitute that ignite memories of those who lived through that time and really highlight how inhabitants lived. Naturally the room has simmering lokschen soup wafting from the ‘Delinsky’ family’s stove and a pretty realistic-looking challah in the middle of the dining table to welcome in Shabbat, plus posters of late, great Jewish boxers of the time on the partitioned bedroom wall. (Ted Kid Lewis, so my Dad tells me.) Louis explains: “We wanted to fill the space completely, using scent boxes for the soup aroma and soundscapes of Yiddish chatter in the kitchen.”

Danielle Patten, director of creative programmes and collections adds: “We source a lot of the room features through eBay and Etsy plus vintage shops, as well as commissioning some replicas of items such as rugs and wallpaper, but a lot of decoration comes from donors, including treasured photographs. We have some extremely valuable art pieces throughout the exhibition and we’re proud to hold works from artists such as Rebecca Solomon, who was of a Jewish background.”

Nestled between an Irish couple’s 1950s house and a 1978 front room of a black family, the tenement room raises questions of how it will be received by the visiting public, at a time where antisemitism is more prevalent than ever. Louis comments: “In spite of world politics, highlighting festivals is really important to us and we repeated the Chanukah display without issue last winter. How it will be received is obviously on our minds but also the fact that there are some pretty valuable objects lent to us each year by a very kind private collector.

“Understanding Jewish history in the UK is essential for comprehending the broader historical narrative of the country. This includes acknowledging the positive contributions of Jewish individuals and communities to British society, as well as the challenges they have faced, such as discrimination and persecution. By learning about Jewish traditions, beliefs and practices, people from different backgrounds can find common ground, build mutual respect, and work together towards common goals and build a more harmonious community.”

Explanatory text appears on eco-friendly cork boards at the entrance to each room and what is written is of great importance to the museum in communicating often sensitive subjects. Louis says: “Jewish community leaders have helped fine-tune the wording by trawling through text to ensure the wording is sensitively done and ensuring we are focusing on the right stories and the most interesting ones.”

The museum invites the public to get in touch if they have something treasured from their own collection that they would like to see featured. museumofthehome.org.uk