On december 2, 2007, a grand celebration took place to mark the completion of the restoration and revival of the Eldridge Street Synagogue. The event was the crowning achievement and realization of a magnificent dream—the culmination of an effort that began with this author’s discovery of the building followed by a twenty-year restoration project that involved hundreds of dedicated participants and cost approximately $20 million.

Today, the institution has been revitalized as a non-sectarian cultural organization, called the Museum at Eldridge Street dedicated to present the culture, history, and traditions of the immense wave of Jewish immigrants to the...

Among the few remaining Great Synagogues on the Lower East Side, the Bialystoker, with the largest active congregation, has fared quite well. It is one of about a halfdozen surviving synagogues whose buildings were originally churches. As the great waves of Eastern European Jewish immigrants began sweeping across the Lower East Side in the mid-nineteenth century, more and more Christian congregations found it expedient to sell their houses of worship to the newcomers, who then converted them into large and impressive synagogues. In 1905, the Jews of the Bialystoker congregation purchased the former Willett Street Methodist Episcopal Church, which had...

As the oldest continuously operating synagogue in New York City, as well as New York’s second oldest synagogue building, Chasam Sopher has more than held its own. Built in 1853 as a purpose-built synagogue (rather than as a church), the structure preserves many of its original architectural details. The red-brick building was built in the novelRundbogenstil, or round-arch Romanesque Revival style by an unknown architect for the German-Jewish congregation Rodeph Sholom.

In 1842, Congregation Rodeph Sholom was founded as aBikkur Cholim(society to care for the sick and needy) in a house located at 187 Attorney Street. The...

The stanton street synagogue (or the Stanton Street Shul, as it is commonly known) has a history, tradition, and even an architectural presence that ranks it among the outstanding synagogues of the Lower East Side. It was founded in 1894 at 155 Rivington Street by a group of immigrant Jews from the town of Brzezany (Berzhanin Yiddish), in Galicia in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The town later became part of Poland in the interwar years, and is now found within the borders of the Ukraine. By 1913, the congregation had grown sufficiently to warrant the...

The kehila kedosha janina synagogue is a designated New York City Landmark and was constructed in 1926–1927 by architect Sydney Daub. It became the new spiritual home for a small group of Romaniote Jews who, because of the turmoil of the Balkan Wars, were exiled from the town of Janina (Ioannina) in northwestern Greece. Adhering to a uniqueminhag(customs and rituals) and anusach(rite or style of prayer service) that is neither Ashkenazic nor Sephardic (Iberian), the Romaniote traditions are different from those of the other two major Jewish groups. This group arrived to America with its...

Looking at the photograph of Anshe Slonim (People of Slonim) taken in 1973 (page 66), it is hard to imagine the colorful and vital historic role that this structure has played—the oldest extant synagogue building in New York City and the fourth oldest in the nation. The original congregation, Ansche Chesed (People of Kindness), was founded in 1825 by a group of Dutch, German, and Polish Jews and was the first Jewish congregation on the Lower East Side. Ansche Chesed was the third Jewish congregation in New York City—after Shearith Israel (Remnant of Israel) (1655) and B’nai Jeshurun...

The house of sages was founded in 1922 as a center for prayer, study, and socializing for retired Orthodox rabbis who lived on the Lower East Side. Daily services were held, not just for the rabbis, but also for all who wished to attend.

Architect Emil Koeppel designed an Art Deco building for the congregation at 152 Henry Street, which the congregation occupied from 1940 to 1989, but as the congregation diminished, the building proved too costly to operate. The House of Sages then moved a few blocks east to its current location on East Broadway. The Henry Street building...

The east side torah center, as with other small early congregations, traces its history to the early nineteenth century, when the most economical accommodations for a new shul could best be found in a former residence, in this case in a circa 1840 Greek Revival row house. Through the years, several chevros occupied the building, the most noteworthy of which was the Slutzker Shul (Beis Haknesseth Anshei Slutzk), whose congregants had come from the formerly Polish village of Slutzk in 1890 and settled first on Pike Street. (Today, the town of Slutzk is located in Belarus.) In 1913, the Talmud...

In the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, Joshua Huberland designed this simple unassuming 1960s brick shul for the Erste Lutowisker Chevra because an urban renewal project had displaced its predecessor shul, organized in 1895. Over the years, this congregation has demonstrated the tenacity and strength typical of so many small Orthodox chevros. In the tradition of naming the congregation after its place of origin, the chevra had its origin in Lutowiska, a village east of Kraków, Poland—now within the borders of the Ukraine.

When some of New York City’s great urban renewal projects of the 1950s and 1960s cleared...

This orthodox synagogue was founded in 1900 by a group of immigrants from the small village of Andrzievo (Jendzivo), located in what is today, northeast Poland (and renamed Andrzejewo). Today’s Yendzshever Shul, as it is commonly known, is located in an attractive Greek Revival brick and brownstone row house, built circa 1840. The synagogue is intimate and imbued with the historical beauties of past traditions. Sadly, the mazoles that once graced the sanctuary of the Yendzshever Shul were destroyed in the early 1970s, when they were painted over. The Yendzshever Shul is the sole remaining synagogue on Henry Street where,...

Today’s sixth street community synagogue/Max D. Raiskin Center occupies one of the more architecturally significant buildings in the East Village section of the Lower East Side, having purchased its house of worship in 1940—much later than most Lower East Side congregations. The previous owner, St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, constructed the building in 1857—serving the German immigrants in this neighborhood (then nicknamed “Kleindeutschland” or “Little Germany”) for over eighty years before its move uptown into Yorkville at 339 East 84th Street where it is now known as Zion-St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. The substantial Greek Revival building adds...

The town and village synagogue is named for the nearby apartment complexes of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village from which it draws much of its membership. Town and Village is the only Conservative Jewish congregation within the boundaries of the historic Lower East Side. As is true with the Sixth Street Community Synagogue and the Mezeritcher Shul, this synagogue would generally be perceived today as being located in the East Village. A relatively new congregation, the shul was organized in 1949 at the nearby Sirovich Home for the Aged on Second Avenue, now operated by the Educational Alliance. The...

The first russian-american Jewish congregation in America and once the oldest Eastern European congregation in New York City, Beth Hamedrash Hagodol (then called Beth Hamedrash) was founded in 1852 in an attic on Bayard Street by Rabbi Abraham Joseph Ash and others who rejected the Reform Judaism of the area’s German-Jewish congregations. The congregation rented space in a building on Elm Street (a demapped northern extension of what is now called Elk Street), located in the “Five Points District” north of City Hall. It then moved to a former courthouse on nearby Centre Street. In 1856, with the assistance of...

With the collapse of the roof of the 150-year old Roumanian-American shul on January 22, 2006, the Lower East Side and the Jewish community lost one of its most treasured and irreplaceable icons. Fortunately, no one was killed or injured, and the Torahs and holy books were undamaged, but the 1,600-seat sanctuary was in ruins. Since the destruction was so severe, it was decided to demolish what was left of the building, with the actual cause of the roof’s collapse never formally ascertained and without any official structural inspections to assess the feasibility of restoring the building. Some time before,...

This is the only recent case of voluntary demolition of a synagogue on the Lower East Side with the intention of constructing a new residential building on the same site, which was supposed to house a new synagogue as well. The history of the former building is strongly linked with the Jewish history of the Lower East Side. Initially, this section of East Broadway consisted of a row of grand mid-1830s Greek Revival residential row houses, which, over time, hosted three major Jewish organizations and an important Jewish journal.

In 1883, with the arrival of waves of immigrant Jews, Machzikei...

The modified greek revival–style building was erected circa 1845 for the First Protestant Methodist Church, but it functioned only for a short time and was subsequently sold to an African American congregation that then renamed the building the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1884, a Polish Jewish group purchased the church, calling itself theErste Galitzianer Chevra(First Galician Congregation). They later changed the name toBeth Haknesseth Mogen Avraham.

In spite of having an active membership and a most enthusiastic and dedicated spiritual leader, Rabbi Elias S. Heftler, the shul faced insurmountable difficulties. The once attractive building...

The name “Pike Street Shul” is still heard today, despite the building’s abandonment and later sale. The former synagogue remains, nonetheless, an imposing edifice and a powerful reminder of the Jewish presence and past influence on the Lower East Side. The original congregation was founded by Russian and Polish Jews who had also broken away from the earlier Congregation Beth Hamedrash in 1853, calling their new shul Beth Hamedrash Livne Yisroel Yelide Polen (House of Study of the Children of Israel Born in Poland). After a later merger with another chevra from the town of Kalwarie, located on the border...

Once considered the most beautiful of the small synagogues on the Lower East Side, this imposing former house of worship was originally called Adath Jeshurun of Jassy, for the Jews who emigrated from Iasi (Jassy), Romania. One cannot help but be struck by the impressive appearance of the tan and cream brick structure with its Moorish design, exemplified by the twin towers with projecting cornices and the stone lions peeking out of the towers near the top, as well as by the huge framed circular window that once held an immense Mogen David. (The muntins of the large circular window,...

When the first edition ofThe Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Sidewas published in 1978, this congregation, or more accurately, this chevra, was teetering on the verge of extinction despite a long existence on the Lower East Side. Unwilling to give up their identity of origin, many disparate groups joined together to create what they hoped would be a more viable congregation. Particularly after World War II, many of these remaining double-named groups—congregations that, in merging, preserved the names of both congregations—then either continued to merge with other congregations or closed their doors forever. Such was...

This synagogue had a long and distinguished history. Built by residents of both Senier (Sejny, a shtetl in what was formerly Lithuania and is now Poland; also sometimes spelled Seini, Seinai, or Sineer) and Wilno (Vilna, now Vilnius, Lithuania), the building was destroyed by arson in 1975. This tragedy followed on the heels of a similar arson attack in 1972, when vandals and fire destroyed theSineerer Shul, at 290 Madison Street at Montgomery Street. That building, built in 1851, had been originally built as the Olive Branch Baptist Church.

The congregation was organized in 1892 and was known as...

Immigrants from the Galician village of Podhajce in pre–World War I southeast Poland, which then belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now the Ukraine), organized this congregation in 1895—naming it Congregation Masas Benjamin Anshe Podhajce. By 1926, the congregation had grown sufficiently to require much larger quarters. They purchased a three-story building at 108 East 1st Street, which they expanded and transformed into a working synagogue. The building was shared with the short-lived Congregation Rodeph Sholom Independent Podhajcer, whose name was perhaps chosen to demonstrate that congregation’s individuality and independence from its host congregation.

The yellow brick and limestone...

In its early years, the no-longer-extant synagogue on this site housed the Zalisczicker Rabenu Ager Erste Verein from Zalishchyky, Ukraine (formerly Poland). By the early 1920s, the building housed Congregation Anshe Obertyn (sometimes spelled Obertin) whose members had originated from Galicia. In the early 1970s, neighborhood vandals burned the nearby chevra Nachlath Z’vi B’nai Israel Linath Ha-Zedek B’nai Menasheh at 289 East 4th Street (founded 1897), and the rabbi joined with the few remaining members of Anshe Obertyn to worship at a nearby shtiebl—possibly at Young Israel at 229 East Broadway. A Spanish-speaking Pentecostal church then subsequently purchased the...

In the 1970s, when fire consumed the building at 314 East 4th Street, it caused the ultimate collapse of the two adjacent buildings including the former Congregation Anshei Baranov at 316 East 4th Street. That building had been built in 1887 as the Church of SS. Cyril and Methodius, a German-speaking Bohemian Roman Catholic Church. When the Bohemian community moved northward, many of the members joined Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, located at 321 East 61st Street. That uptown church was undone by the construction of an adjacent ramp for the Queensboro (Edward I. Koch) Bridge and would be...

The city of czernowitz (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine) was once the capital of the eastern Austro-Hungarian province of Bukovina, and because of its ornate architecture and cultural associations, became known as “Little Vienna.” In music, its “claim to fame” was in the popular song “Hava Nagila” (“Come, Let’s Rejoice”), often incorrectly thought to have been an Israeli folk song. The music was actually a folk dance song (a variation of thehora) from Bukovina. However, the young man who would become “Cantor” Moshe Nathanson wrote the lyrics at the age of twelve. The lyrics were based on the Psalm, “This day...

This delightful little jewel, embraced on both sides by 1890s tenements, is an outstanding example of a Neo-Classical tenement–style synagogue. The congregation was founded in 1888 as Eduth Adas L’Israel Anshe Mezeritch (Witness to Israel, People of Mezeritch) by Polish immigrants, who, 22 years later, rebuilt the building from a former residential tenement. Designed in 1910 by architect Herman Horenburger, it has the distinction of being one of the last surviving synagogues of this style on the Lower East Side. The shul’s façade is divided into an upper and lower section topped by protruding cornices that are supported by...

Both 638 east 6th street and its adjacent twin, 636 East 6th Street, have been attributed to the architectural firm of Vaux & Radford and were built side-by-side in 1889 in an ornate Neo-Classical style. Unusual is the playful use of brick in a three-dimensional sawtooth basket-weave pattern in the building gables. Today, #638 (formerly a synagogue) is a community center and the adjacent #636 is a Pentecostal church. Next to these buildings, at 630 East 6th Street, is a restored red-brick industrial school, also by Calvert Vaux, which is now used for supportive housing services. Among architect Calvert Vaux’s numerous...

Among the huge numbers of Jewish immigrants arriving in New York between 1848 and 1914 were approximately 100,000 Jews from Hungary. Since they lived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they were often German-speaking as well, and often considered part of a German influx that grew with the failed revolutions of 1848. The Hungarian Jews formed a distinct group. These earliest immigrants tended to be more highly educated than those who came after 1880 who tended to be laborers, artisans, and trades people. In parts of Hungary, German-speaking Jews were more assimilated than in some other countries, and saw themselves as more...

The original congregation, founded in 1884, filed plans in 1910 to build a synagogue designed by the firm of Bernstein & Bernstein. The simple, elegant Neo-Classical–inspired tenement-style synagogue building, comparable to Anshe Mezeritch, had a bold façade with striking lateral rusticated bands of limestone. The building was abandoned in 1975 and demolished in 1985.

The synagogue’s unusual name was possibly meant to memorialize the Dombrovagaon(honorable sage) Rabbi Shabtai Katz Rappaport, who was the spiritual leader for the congregation in Dombrova Tarnowska (Poland) in the late nineteenth century. Rabbi Rappaport was also the Av Beit Din of Dombrova (presiding...

After a lengthy struggle over the future of the synagogue and suffering two fires, the synagogue—the last functioning shul east of Avenue B—was finally sold by its congregation, due partly to the deteriorating state of the building and also because of the increasing inability of some of its most committed elderly members to walk the distance from their homes in the Grand Street co-ops. For a decade, it then became somewhat of a “squatter shul” with its own rabbi while the issue of ownership was played out in the courts. In 2006, the building was finally sold for...

The imposing building was built originally for the Forsyth Street Church, and only later became the Forsyth Street Synagogue for a congregation that originated from Illiya (Ilja or Illya), located near Minsk in Belarus. In 1971, the four-story yellow-brick and limestone building was sold to the Seventh-Day Adventist Church of Union Square. The attractive church structure was designed in 1890 by one of America’s foremost architects, J. Cleveland Cady. (Cady is remembered for his designs for the American Museum of Natural History and the former Metropolitan Opera House, plus fifteen Yale University buildings. In the Lower East Side, Cady is...

Kol israel anshe poland (sometimes spelled “Polan” or “Polen”), (All [people] of Israel, People of Poland), was organized in 1832 in Suwalki, Poland, and in the early 1880s, members emigrated to America, making it one of the earliest Eastern European Jewish congregations to settle on the Lower East Side. Little is known about the chevra until 1892, when members decided to erect their own impressive synagogue, located at 27 Forsyth Street (then numbered 20 and 22 Forsyth Street).

The town of Suwalki, situated in northeast Poland close to the Lithuanian and Russian borders, was an important commercial center situated on...

The former synagogue building has undergone a number of architectural and religious institutional changes. Originally, the structure had been a tenement that was purchased in 1888 and then remodeled into a synagogue. The building served Tifereth Yerushelaim until the late 1960s at which time it was acquired by a Syrian Orthodox (Christian) institution, Achim Aram Zobah (Association of Syrian Rites). Shortly afterward, the building was sold to the Lincoln African Methodist Episcopal Church, which occupied the building until the late 1970s. Then, the building was acquired by a developer and converted to a dry-goods warehouse and subsequently to residential space....

The congregation was loosely organized in the 1880s by groups of immigrants from the town of Sochaczew, now in Poland. Most of the congregants had fled the periodic pogroms that ravaged the Jewish communities of Russia. (At that time, parts of what had once been Poland had become part of the Russian Empire.) The newcomers were primarily Hasidim. Having only recently immigrated, they were too poor to build a synagogue for themselves and chose to worship instead in nearby shtieblach. In 1904, the congregation officially organized and rented space in a tenement at 121 Ludlow Street, where they remained until...

The former lemberger shul, built as a tenement synagogue by architect James J. Millman in 1925, is now the Spanish-speaking Iglesia Bautista Emmanuel (Emmanuel Baptist Church). The building’s design shares commonalities with other tenement synagogues of the Lower East Side. In the gable of the façade is the Decalogue (Twin Tablets of Moses). Undoubtedly the round central window displayed a Star of David much like Kehila Kedosha Janina or the Stanton Street Synagogue. Note the women’s entrance to the right of the main door. Of special interest is the ornate wrought iron gate reminiscent of the former Podhajcer Shul. (See...

Until the late 1970s, there was a Sephardic congregation on the Lower East Side named Kehila Kedosha Ahavat Shalom de Monastir (Peace and Brotherhood of Monastir). The city of Monastir, in what was then southern Yugoslavia, had been a major center for Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jews. This synagogue was located in the inter-building courtyard, and was reached by walking through the tenement building’s ground floor hallway to the back. The building housed a Kehila (sanctuary for the congregation), with an outside and an inside stair to the women’s gallery. An upper floor housed the Talmud Torah (religious school for boys), called...

The bialystoker center, commonly known in the neighborhood as The Bialystoker Home, should not be confused with the previously described Bialystoker Synagogue. The long history of the Bialystoker Home for the Aged (later renamed the Bialystoker Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing) began in 1864 when residents from Bialystok, Poland created one of New York’s first and largest landsmanshaftn, or immigrant mutual aid societies.

In 1923, a federation of organizations funded by immigrants from Bialystok began planning and raising funds for the construction of a community center. By 1926, while the building was under construction, the function was reoriented to that...