Recently, County Prep fashion students learned about the lives of two families who lived at 97 Orchard Street from 1892 – 1935. By the turn of the 20th Century, the Lower East Side was both the center of the nation’s garment production and a focus of its immigrant life. The fashion students learned the ways in which garment workers of that time were as hardworking as the immigrant families of today. The tour introduced them to two particular families, the Levines and the Rogarshevskys, who like many immigrants of their time, found a livelihood in the garment trade, New York’s largest industry.
This field trip is an example of cross-curriculum learning as the students see how working conditions were in the early 1900’s in comparison to working condition today.