Eldridge Street Synagogue and Museum, New York

Top of the Edridge Street Synagogue

From the late 19th through the early 20th century millions of East European Jews immigrated to the United States.  Thousands of them congregated on New York's Lower East Side and among those who congregated on the Lower East Side, hundreds congregated (literally) under the roof of the Edridge Street Synagogue. Completed in 1887, the Eldridge Street Synagogue was anything but ordinary frotm its beginning.  With its combination of Romanesque, Gothic, and Moorish elements, the dramatic new building swiftly became a neighborhood treasure and source of pride.
    Oddly enough, the architects, Peter and Francis Herter, were known largely as designers of tenements--the stolid, and even grim, apartment buildings that became the symbol of struggle and poverty to generations of immigrants.  Yet, at Eldridge Street they spared no expense to create a genuine work of art, from the stained glass window facing the street, to the intricate carving on the interior pillars, to the magnificent chandelier. 
   In part, this opulence reflected the prestige of the synagogue's leader, Rabbi Eliahu Borok, otherwise known as Eliahu the Blessed, who had been the Head Rabbi of the entire Jewish community in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Eldridge Street Synagogue was not just a show piece, though.  It functioned as a community and religious center for Jews from all countries and social classes.
     As the children of those people grew up, however, most moved from the Lower East.  After 1920, the population of synagogue gradually declined. By the 1960s, the main building had been closed and only a small congregation still met in the basement.  In 1971, New York University professor Gerald R. Wolfe founded the Friends of the Eldridge Street Synagogue in an attempt to restore the building. Progress was slow.  For the next fifteen years it seemed as if little could be done to save this wonderful building.

Interior Detail

Enter Roberta Brandes Gratz, journalist, urban historian, and preservationist  When she visited the synagogue in the late 1980s she saw pigeons roosting in the rafters.  She also saw enormous potential.  As head of the Eldridge Street Project, she marshaled all her fundraising resources. The Project conducted architectural surveys, contracted craftspeople, and launched an outreach campaign. The ultimate goal was two-fold:  To revive the synagogue as a house of worship and to create a museum that would be open to all.  In 1996, the Eldridge Street Synagogue was named a National Historic Landmark. Eleven years later, in December 2007,  the synagogue's 120th anniversary, the Eldridge Street Synagogue and Museum was opened to the public.
One of the new "jewels" of the restoration was a stained glass window designed by artist Kiki Smith with the assistance of architect Deborah Gans.  It is situated above the sanctuary and opposite the original rose window of 1887.  Today museum receives thousands of visitors every year and the synagogue is actively used by an Orthodox Jewish congregation.  The two functions support and enhance each other.  Once more, the Eldridge Street Synagogue is the center of a thriving community that continues to care for this architectural treasure as it enters its second century as one of the great buildings of New York's Lower East Side.

The Ark

 

Links: You can discover more about synagogue and museum at their main site.
For information on the history of immigration and the Lower East Side, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum is a great place to start.  And the New York Times Artsbeat blog has a great video on the Kiki Smith window.
          

Photo Credits:
The Museum at Eldridge Street.