My great great greataunt and great great grandmother were born in the Lower East Side at the turn of the 1900s. Like many Jews at that time, their parents had immigrated from Eastern Europe and had moved into a tenement similar to the one that this museum is based in: in fact, it was on Hester Street, three blocks away. They made a living through piecework and sewing lace designs. My great great greataunt became wealthier later in life and moved to Queens in the 1920s. There, she bought this rug as a symbol of status—the rug itself is from Iran. In the 1950s, wall-to-wall carpeting came into fashion. She redesigned her house to fit this development, then, and gave the rug to her sister, who was financially much less well off and was living in a small apartment in the Bronx. Fifteen years later my great great grandmother moved out of this Bronx apartment—it was at the top of a hill and she was quite old—to move to Hartford where her children lived. When she moved, she gave the rug to her granddaughter, my grandmother who was living in the Upper West Side. This rug has moved between several houses and has been a part of my memories of my grandparents’ house for my entire life. It is in the middle of the living room, a room which I usually only go into most often during family events. While there are not necessarily any stories associated with the rug itself, it has been present for most of the memories I have of a part of my family, then.

– Linus G

Relationship:  Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more