“A crowd of people on Orchard Street, lined with street vendors. Orchard Street at Hester Street, Looking South, 1898.” Division Street is visible at the end of Orchard Street.

Orchard and Hester Streets were home to two of the Lower East Side’s largest open-air pushcart markets. These markets were a feature of daily life for the neighborhood’s poor tenement residents; they provided cheap food and goods for customers and income for vendors.