so new york is really becoming the way we think about it as a kind of polyglot city. this is really the age where that's beginning to congeal. as part of this, all these groups are beginning to organize. as we said, this is sort of the shady of tammany hall, getting the bearings in new york in the middle of the 19th century ooeps. what were conditions like? the lower east side is famous during these years, particularly as you get into the late 19th century as being the single 340e69 crowded place on the face of the earth. there's not much ten meant regulation at that point, not much by way of sanitary regulations. kind of a free-for-all. enormously crowded conditions. often you have big problems with disease on the lower east side because sanitary conditions are poor. in many people's memories you also have very tight-knit ethnic neighborhoods which had powerful institutions. sometimes churches, for other groups sometimes synagogues, sometimes labor unions beginning to emerge during these years. the lower east side at that moment is this tightly packed very intense pl