Orchard Street, the eight-block stretch of the Lower East Side named as Time Out's coolest street in NYC this year, has undergone a host of changes in its history. Often, New York City's street-level history gets forgotten-demolished, paved over and deemed too small to make history books. But one museum is dedicated to remembering the stories of this street and its people .
Kat Lloyd stands in the dim light on the first-floor staircase of a dilapidated, New York City tenement building. Before her: a tour of wide-eyed teens on a field trip from their high school in Queens. Their guide, Lloyd, encourages the students to imagine the building's 22 apartments when they were new, back in 1863, and brimming with mostly German immigrants.