None of Nottage's characters are from New York City, each person we meet has migrated from their home to this area and because of that each person brings cultural, traditional, and religious baggage with them.
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Between 1850 and 1900 thousands of immigrants came to the United States to live in New York City. In 1900 the immigration processing station on Ellis Island opened and over the next 14 years the flow of people increased to roughly 5,000 per day! People came from Ireland, Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe, and China. The majority of immigrants entering New York City were poor. As such many of them lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan as rent for tenement housing was low. Tenement housing was designed to hold multiple families in separate apartments, and many of these small apartments (usually 3 rooms) housed upwards of 7 people, some even hosting boarders to live in the apartments in addition to their families.
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Many of the larger tenements in New York had a house keeper or landlady. Often this was a widow who received free rent in exchange for maintaining the building. As a result many of the larger tenements were very clean.
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Most tenements in the Lower East Side were located in multi-use neighborhoods which put them in close proximity to factories, docks, slaughterhouses, and power stations. While this provided easy and quick access to employments it also meant living with increased air pollution, high noise levels, and obnoxious smells.
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It was not uncommon for people to move with a fair amount of frequency. Changing financial conditions meant families would seek out better housing when possible or move back to cheaper options when necessary.
Where is everyone from?
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Esther - North Carolina
Mayme - Memphis
Mrs. Van Buren - Georgia
Mrs. Dickson - The South
Mr. Marks - Romania
George - Barbados
The Lower East Side was the capital of Jewish America at the turn of the century. The earliest Eastern European Jews to settle there had establish synagogues, libraries, and stores and almost every business was Jewish-owned or Jewish-run.
By 1900 the Lower East Side was packed with more than 700 people per acre! Though it could "certainly be frightening, dangerous, noisy, and cramped it was still a place of relative safety compared to the virulently anti-Semitic Russian Empire and, however chaotic it might be, it was still the greatest concentration of Jewish life in nearly two thousand years" (library of congress).
An Interesting Look Back At Living Arrangements:
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"Throughout most of the nineteenth century, tenants in New York City were divided into three basic categories: renters, lodgers, and boarders. In general, renters paid for their own apartment, which was not shared. Lodgers paid for a room (or bed) in someone else's apartment, but received no meals. Boarders had both a room and meals, usually breakfast and dinner" (Inside the apple).
The Physiology of New York Boarding Houses by Thomas Butler Gunn was published in 1857 and looks, somewhat satirically, at over 30 different types of boarding houses such as "The Cheap Boarding-House" and "The Boarding House Where There Are Marriageable Daughters". In the latter Gunn speaks extensively about a boarding-house that stands on "debatable ground and is a plain brick building, which might be rendered brighter and cleaner-looking by an application of the paint-brush" (103). In the house lives a widow and her three daughters who "constitute the main feature and attraction" (105). These daughters fit into three categories: 1. Poetic and strong-minded, 2. Religious, and 3. Gushing and exuberant. It is the
third that Gunn gushes over as she is "at once the
belle and boast of the Establishment, being both
prettier and younger, and therefore more
attractive, than her sisters" (107). Being so, it is only
the third, and youngest sister, with whom a man
could find a chance of happiness but only if he were to "immediately emigrate with his bride to California, change his name, and repudiate all connection with his wife's relatives" (110)
Barbadian Culture:
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The culture of Barbados is a blend of West
African and British. Religion plays a significant role in
day to day life and roughly 95% of the population identifies as Christian.
In 1807 the British abolished the slave trade in Barbados but did not outlaw the practice of slavery until 1834. Even after the emancipation of enslaved people the labor force in Barbados was faced with issues. Major competition from the European beet sugar industry, coupled with a dense population (and therefore cheep labour), meant that the white, elite merchant class could pass off any loss of profits from the sugar plantations to working class.
