The Jewish Center Brighton Beach, also known as the Jewish Center of Coney Island, is a synagogue, school, and community center. The building was constructed between 1929 and 1931 in the Renaissance Revival style. The facade is ornamented in gold colored stone and prominently features a grand staircase and loggia on the second story. The construction of the center came at a time after Brighton Beach's heyday - when lavish amusement parks were razed, and the southern edge of Brooklyn became a middle-class residential neighborhood. The demographic was heavily Jewish, comprised of New Yorkers who had moved in with relatives following the crash of 1929 and immigrants fleeing Europe and Hitler's increasingly anti-Semitic policies. The Jewish Center was one of the first synagogues in the neighborhood. Its combined programmatic use: a school, a community center, and place of worship was a reflection of the needs of the Jewish community at Brighton Beach. The new type of facility provided aid to the newly arrived and disadvantaged members of the community. This development of synagogue architecture is distinctly American, the center being a space where traditionally separate institutions were combined.

Astor Apartments, 1929.

Hotel Ricadonna, ca.1900.

Brighton Beach Hotel, 1901. William A. Engelman was a businessman and developer who named the area now known as Brighton Beach in 1869 after a British seaside town. Over the last few decades of the 19th century, Engelman was developer of the beach resort community after purchasing several hundred acres of beachfront property. He developed and constructed the Brighton Beach Bathing Pavilion and Ocean Pier in 1871, which accommodated 1,2000 visitors for ocean bathing, walking along the water, and dining at the high end restaurants within the hotel. After Austin Corbin, competitor opened the nearby and larger Manhattan Beach Hotel on his own newly acquired chuck of land, Engleman upped the ante and with a group of investors built the Hotel Bright. It was a multi-story wood-framed hotel, with deep porches, towers, and manicured lawns, overlooking the boardwalk and the ocean. The hotel could accommodate more than 5000 people.

Spectators gather to view the Brighton Beach Hotel, previously known as the Hotel Brighton, prior to its move inland; April 3, 1888. Upon its opening in July 1878, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle hailed the new Hotel Brighton, "where all Brooklyn will summer" as "probably the grandest seaside hotel in the entire country." The 178-room hotel was situated a stone's throw from the shoreline, on thirty acres of beachfront property owned by the Brooklyn, Flatbush, and Coney Island Railroad Company. Just a decade later, the selling point of ocean proximity had become a liability: beach erosion threatened the integrity of the hotel's supporting piles, necessitating an ingenious relocation effort. (In this photo, taken immediately before the hotel was moved, waves can be seen lapping well beneath the building's main floor.) Engineers devised a novel solution: the entire hotel would be pulled 500-600 feet inland, atop 24 railroad tracks installed for the purpose. The Hotel was reopened at its new location at the foot of Coney Island Avenue, where it operated until it was shuttered and razed in 1923.

Tracks on what would later become the BRT (and later BMT) Brighton Beach Line, July 12, 1916. The Brighton Beach Line opened in 1878, providing service from Prospect Park to Brighton Beach at Coney Island Avenue, near the recently-opened Brighton Beach Hotel. In 1917, the line was extended west toward the Culver Depot, taking over existing trolley tracks. Today, the line runs on elevated tracks over Brighton Beach Avenue. In this view from July 1916, the Brighton Beach Station — then the terminus of the Brighton Beach Line — is visible at center, in the distance. At right is the Chase Through the Clouds roller coaster, built in 1910 by the Giant Safety Racing Company. The surrounding amusement park burned in a 1919 fire, but parts of the coaster were salvaged and relocated to Coney Island’s Luna Park.

Hotel Riccadonna, ca. 1910. In 1904 a hotel was constructed on the corner of Ocean Parkway and Sea Breeze Avenue. It was a three-story wood framed building called the Shelbourne. The hotel had 150 guest rooms, 65 bathrooms and a phone in every room (quite a feature in the early 20th century). In 1906 the hotel became the Riccadonna, named for a family whose patriarch Abele Riccadonna, an Italian immigrant, had become a successful caterer and restaurant owner in the the 1890s in Manhattan. The hotel catered to the moneyed classes that had been the early visitors to Coney Island. (It was a latecomer to that world, as by 1905-1910 the atmosphere of Coney Island was becoming more working class and amusement park based.) In 1909 the hotel, already quite grand, was enlarged considerably. The additions included 50 more guest rooms and all new dining rooms, parlors, smoking, and billiard rooms. There are conflicting stories about the changing of ownership in 1910-1911 and the last years of the building, but it is not hard to imagine that it would have declined and been demolished along with the other grand hotels and resorts in the late 1910s and 1920s. Today a large condominium building occupies the site.

The Brighton Beach Station of the BMT Brighton Line was built in 1878. It was renovated in 1917.

Brighton Beach Hotel demolished (foreground) with the nearby Music Hall soon to be taken down, 1924. Between 1910 and 1920 two of the other large high end hotels in the area (Manhattan Beach Hotel were , as massive changes came to the neighborhood. The prohibition of gambling caused the failure of the racetracks and the hotels where the wealthy, gambling clientele stayed. The Brighton Beach Hotel outlasted the others due to its proximity to the booming parks and beaches Coney Island (though this proximity to the working-class amusement area had once been a detriment). The building was demolished in 1923 and the land was sold to residential developers.

Brighton Beach Hotel ca. 1888 After becoming a millionaire selling mules and horses to the Union Army during the American Civil War, William Engeman returned home to New York where he purchased the land nestled between Coney Island and Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn for twenty thousand dollars, then known as Middle Division. He renamed the newly acquired land Brighton Beach and in 1870 opened the Ocean Hotel, a modest structure compared to what was to come. The year 1878 saw the opening of the Brighton Beach Bathing Pavilion and Ocean Pier, as well as The Brighton Beach Hotel, a grandiose building in design and in direct competition with Austin Corbin’s nearby Oriental Hotel and Manhattan Beach Hotel. The Brighton Beach Fair Grounds (known as Engeman’s Track”) were built a year later to attract more visitors to the pier and hotel. The multiple hotels and attractions to the area launched the heyday of Brighton Beach. Over time it became more noticeable the ocean was eroding the beach and threatening the Brighton Beach Hotel. In 1888, Engeman’s son (also named William) who had taken over the business after his father’s death, funded the colossal undertaking to lift the hotel onto train tracks in order to move it further inland to avoid the oncoming erosion. As outlandish as it sounds, this actually happened and seemingly without a hitch. In the photograph above, taken on April 3rd, 1888, you can see the tracks being laid and the train cars being prepared. The Brighton Beach Hotel survived through natural disasters, financial strain, and more natural disasters until 1924 when it was demolished and replaced with the Riegelmann Boardwalk. Thus, the heyday of Brighton Beach had come to an end.

Hotel Shelburne ca. 1913 Ocean Parkway terminated here at Seabreeze Avenue, where the Hotel Shelburne catered to Coney Island's seasonal visitors. Built originally as the boxy Parkway Baths Hotel, allegedly in thirty days, the hotel added its many balconies and gaudy signs later, co-opting the image of the major amusement parks opening around it- Steeplechase Park (1897), Luna Park (1903) and Dreamland (1904).

After becoming a millionaire selling mules and horses to the Union Army during the American Civil War, William Engeman returned home to New York where he purchased the land nestled between Coney Island and Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn for twenty thousand dollars, then known as Middle Division. He renamed the newly acquired land Brighton Beach and in 1870 opened the Ocean Hotel, a modest structure compared to what was to come.