Girlhood in an immigrant Jewish family in Greenwich Village
At 90 Charles Street, the doors do not close and the dead and the living move seamlessly together. As Jennifer renovates her crumbling family home, she reckons with what it means for a house to hold the voice of a family.
On 90 Charles Street in Greenwich Village, New York City, the doors do not close, and the dead and the living move seamlessly together.
Jennifer is raised to be seen but not heard in this religious Jewish household, where she becomes a keen observer of her immigrant family’s jovial unhappiness while struggling to learn the quiet problem-solving abilities required of Orthodox women. Her mother, who fled from Switzerland in 1938, creates routines, regimenting every minute of the day, while her father’s childhood, his deportation from Poland to the Soviet Gulag in Siberia, casts a shadow over the mundane texture of life in New York.
When her parents die, Jennifer is left to navigate the colossal mess – of their house, and of their lives. As she renovates the family home, she finds herself grappling with decades of clutter both inside the house and in her memories. She uncovers stories, family secrets and layers of history.
90 Charles Street is a unique family chronicle, a comic diary, a textual collage, where Jennifer ultimately reckons with what it means for a house to hold the voice of a family.
Jennifer Landau-Carter was born and raised on 90 Charles Street, where she mastered the arts of stoop-sitting and people-watching, both of which remain her principal passions. She is the third generation to tell the family story: in 2018, the experiences of her uncle George Landau were chronicled in the documentary film Lies and Miracles: Childhood in a Siberian Labor Camp, and her grandfather Meier Landau’s memoir A Lost World, published posthumously in 2023, describes the family’s deportation and life in the Soviet Gulag.
Jennifer holds a BA from Harvard in Social Anthropology, an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University in Organizational Behavior, and a Doctorate from the Università degli Studi di Parma, Italy in Economics of Public Administration. Her professional career began in Bocconi University School of Management as Professor of Organizational Behavior in Milan, Italy, she then opened Poise, a hair salon in Portland, Oregon, and lastly she was a diplomat for the U.S. government, serving on four continents. Jennifer is only “aspirationally retired,” since the renovation of 90 Charles Street is ongoing and very stressful.
