With the influx of Jewish Yiddish-speaking immigrants to New York, the audience for Yiddish publications grew. Forward publisher Louis Miller proposed the title Forverts – Forward in English – transliterated from Vorwärts, the German Socialist Democratic party newspaper, whose ideals inspired the Forward’s founders. These images help tell the story of the Forward newspaper itself, whose daily updates of local and international news helped shaped a way of life for Jewish immigrants for generations.

Neighborhood Playhouse ARCHITECT: Ingalls & Hoffman DATE: 1913-15 STYLE: Neo-Georgian The Neighborhood Playhouse was constructed in 1913-15 by sisters Alice and Irene Lewisohn as part of the Henry Street Settlement. A theatrical group by the same name founded by Lewisohn sisters was located here from 1915 to 1927. One of the city’s early “little theaters,” it was an experimental theater that presented innovative drama, song, and dance. The redbrick neo-Georgian style facade was designed by the architectural firm of Ingalls & Hoffman.

Abraham “Ab” Cahan was the founding editor of the Forward and made the paper a success. He thought that it must align itself with the interests of the workers, outside of their preoccupation with the daily struggle for bread. Cahan was the first intellectual activist to speak in Yiddish while addressing the working masses in the Lower East Side’s meeting halls. This picture appeared on the front page of the paper’s 30th anniversary edition in 1927.

This building is one of the four surviving fieldstone religious structures built in the late Federal era in lower Manhattan. The fieldstone was quarried from Mount Pitt, a hill that once stood at the present corner of Pitt and Grand Streets. Bialystoker Synagogue, originally the Willett Street Methodist Episcopal Church, has a richly hued interior with statuary and paintings. A concealed corridor discovered during renovations in the 1990’s led to speculation that the building was a safe house on the Underground Railroad. The building is a New York City Individual Landmarks and is listed on the State and Nation Register of Historic Places.

The intersection of Division, Canal, and Ludlow Streets. The intricate facade former Loew’s Canal Street Theater is visible at center-right, on the north side of Canal Street.

The history of organized outdoor play for children in New York goes back over 100 years, reflecting the social and cultural issues throughout.

Henry Street Settlement ARCHITECT: Unknown DATE: 1827 STYLE: Federal This handsome Federal three-story townhouse with basement retains much of its original appearance, including its original doorway and iron railing in front. The building is a good example of Federal architecture. Its fine doorway is complete with leaded glass sidelights and transom. The door frame with its iconic colonnettes supports a wood transom-bar embellished with moldings.

Seward Park Branch, NYPL, ca. 1977.

Camp Vacamas, started in 1924, is a sleepaway camp originally located Upstate in the Catskills, in Kingston, N.Y. Founded by several Jewish organizations including The Forward, the name is an acronym of the East Side Vacation Camp Association. The camp is now located in West Milford, N.J. and is still called Camp Vacamas.

This small church shows its architectural kinship to the nearby Sea and Land Church in that both, though basically Georgian, boast Gothic windows, a sophistication derived from English precedent, perhaps from the Battey Langley's books. Small stones were used here as at Saint Paul's Chapel, and, although ashlar quoins were omitted, the window openings have been reinforced with brick frames. The spire was apparently not completed above the stonework, as the wooden spire would seem to date from a much later period.

The Bialystoker Synagogue, 1930.

The longtime home of the Jewish Daily Forward sits on East Broadway between Rutgers and Jefferson Streets. The Yiddish-language newspaper was founded in 1897 and built its iconic headquarters in 1912 at ground zero for its Eastern European constituents. The legendary paper still publishes digitally but its landmark building is a testament to the changing landscape of the neighborhood - and country. Through Spring 2020, the Museum at Eldridge Street is teaming up with the Forward to present an exhibition of metal press plates in the Forward archives. These artifacts of the printing process show the ways in which images were used in the Forward to illustrate Jewish culture around the world. In the exhibition, the plates are displayed alongside contemporary prints made in the traditional process at the South Street Seaport Museum's Bowne & Co., Stationers. More information at eldridgestreet.org/pressed.

215-219 Madison Street, north side, between Rutgers and Jefferson Streets.

Much-beloved by his legions of Forverts-reading fans, actor Edward G. Robinson was born Emanuel Goldengers in Romania and grew up in a Yiddish-speaking household on the Lower East Side. Here, he visits the paper’s office for a shot with editor Cahan at the time his film The Hole in the Wall was released.

165 Henry Street, formerly the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School, ca. 1980. Founded in 1903, the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School is a modern-day Orthodox Jewish school, also known as a yeshiva. The institution was named after Rabbi Jacob Joseph, the chief rabbi of New York City's Association of American Orthodox Hebrew Congregations. Hundreds of rabbis and community leaders have attended this school. It saw its most productive years between the 1940s and the 1960s. In 1976, the institution relocated to the Richmond area of Staten Island, where it continues to teach its rigorous Talmudic curriculum to students from nursery age through the twelfth grade.

“Street Scene - Lower East Side, 1898. From intersection of Hester and Suffolk Sts. Hester St. at Right; Cart at Left on Norfolk; Sussex in Background; Clearance for Seward Park.”

Just five months after the 1929 stock market crash that signaled the start of the Great Depression, thousands lined up to get matzoh for Passover, an alternative, according to the Forward, to a breadline. A headline on the front page the same day described a “Matzoh Riot” as up to 5,000 people stood in the cold outside a Lower East Side synagogue, then, frozen and furious, tried to break into the synagogue’s basement. Four local beat cops had to call for back-up to help quell the uprising.

Dilapidated buildings at 223, 225, 227, and 229 Henry Street, ca. 1976. By the 1970s, many buildings in this part of the Lower East Side had been abandoned as the neighborhood developed a reputation for drugs and crime. Today, Henry Street is notable for stretches of tenement architecture which have survived recent development in the area.

This 6-story building was demolished to make way for the F train subway entrance on the south east corner of Rutgers Street and East Broadway.

Henry Street Settlement, ca. 1978. The Henry Street Settlement was established by nurse and progressive reformer Lillian Ward as the Nurses Settlement in 1893. It was an on the ground organization that aimed to bring social services and healthcare programming to the families, and particularly the children, of the surrounding immigrant neighborhood. Renamed the Henry Street Settlement, Wald moved into 265 Henry Street (at center) in 1895 after the building was gifted to the organization by Jewish philanthropist, Jacob Schiff. The Federal Style townhouse was constructed in 1827. After the turn of the century the Settlement began occupying additional buildings on Henry Street, including no. 267, its neighbor to the east. In the first decade of the 20th century they opened one of the earliest playgrounds in the city in the backyard of their Henry Street property, funded the salary of the first school nurse in a NYC public school (prompting the city to create nursing positions), and created summer camps. The organization's interest in arts programming began in earnest in the 1910s and it has remained as considerable focus into the 21st century. In 1938 the Settlement began leasing 263 Henry Street (also built ca.1827) and in 1949 they purchased it. The series of three early 19th century buildings that make up the main offices of the settlement house look from the exterior to be separate, but as they were acquired the interior walls were removed to create more usable space. They retain the look of an early 19th century streetscape in an neighborhood that later crowded with tenements. The buildings were designated NYC landmarks in 1966 and have undergone extensive restorations to preserve their architectural history, inside and out.

"On a rainy March morning in 1893, the life of a young nurse named Lillian Wald changed forever. Wald was giving a lesson in bed-making at a school on the Lower East Side when a young girl appeared and hurriedly requested that Wald attend to her sick mother. Following the girl over broken roadways, 'dirty mattresses,' and 'heaps of refuse'; passing 'reeking' tenement houses… Wald finally arrived at the crowded apartment where a woman had hemorrhaged during childbirth. Seeing the woman’s 'wretched' and 'pitiful' state and providing aid to a family with nowhere else to turn had a profound effect on Wald. 'Within a half an hour' of coming to this woman’s assistance, Wald later wrote, she had determined that she would move to the Lower East Side. Within six months Wald and her fellow nurse Mary Brewster had rented an apartment on Jefferson Street and begun a mission to provide health care to their new community. In 1895 Wald and her nurses’ settlement moved into a house on Henry Street purchased for her by philanthropist Jacob Schiff. The organization, taking its name from its new address, would become known as the Henry Street Settlement." For more on Henry Street and other 'settlements' in New York City, check out this article by Ralph da Costa Nunez and Ethan G. Sribnick in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

Harry De Jur Playhouse, 466 Grand Street, ca. 1979. This three-story Georgian Revival red brick structure, constructed between 1912 and 1915, was built as a theatre space for the Henry Street Settlement. Designed by architects Harry C. Ingalls and F. Burrall Hoffman, Jr., it was named for Harry De Jur, who had attended the settlement's programs as a child and was on the board as an adult. Initially created to provide the dense immigrant community of the Lower East Side with a local playhouse, the experimental theatre (along with Providence Playhouse and Washington Square Players) became an important venue in the foundation of modern American dramatic theater.

The Forward Building, 175 East Broadway, ca. 1989. Once the headquarters of the city’s Yiddish-language newspaper, The Forward, 175 East Broadway is a Beaux Arts architectural masterpiece that sits directly across from Seward Park. Designed to the plans of architect George Boehm, the Forward Building was erected in 1912 to accommodate the paper’s growing staff and replace its former makeshift-office in a tenement building. When completed, this ten-story tower was the first “skyscraper” in the Lower East Side.

Youths sit on the stoop of the former Congregation Makower of Polen, 203 Henry Street; ca. 1978.

Kletzker Brotherly Aid Association building, ca. 1978. The Kletzker Landsmannschaft, an aid organization for immigrants, was founded in 1892 by Jewish immigrants from Kletzk, Poland (near present-day Minsk, Belarus). The L-shaped building, which has an additonal entrance at 41 Canal Street, has since been a funeral home serving the Jewish, Italian, and Chinese communities of the Lower East Side.

Group of Socialist leaders including Forward editor in chief Ab Cahan (in center, looking to his right), former Vienna, Austria vice-Mayor Dr. Max Winter, and Frank R. Crosswaith, founder of the Negro Labor Committee

Church of St. Mary, 440 Grand Street, ca. 1978. Established in 1826 to serve Irish immigrants living in the Lower East Side, the Church of St. Mary is the third oldest Catholic parish in New York City. The building, erected in 1832-33, was later expanded in 1871 by the renowned ecclesiastical architect Patrick Charles Keely. Before the sanctuary was completed, the parish held services in a former Presbyterian church on Sheriff Street. The original section of the building is the second oldest Roman Catholic structure to exist in the city, after St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, which was built in 1815.

Essex and Hester Streets, looking West, toward Ludlow Street. The Second Avenue El tracks are visible in the background, above Allen Street. Service ran along this segment, opened in 1880 and including stops at nearby Canal and Grand Streets, until its closure in 1942.

“Storefronts at the intersection of Division and Canal Streets. In the center is the former Loew's Canal Street Theatre.” Thomas Lamb designed the theater and its facade, completed in 1927. Loew’s Canal Street opened with a capacity of over 2,300 and remained in operation for at least 30 years. The former theater was sold in 1960 for retail use and designated a New York City Landmark in 2010.

Located on a stretch of East Broadway once known as “Yiddish newspaper row”, this was the headquarters for Vorwärtz, or the Jewish Daily Forward, the most widely read Yiddish newspaper in the United States. First published in 1897, it was immensely influential on the Jewish community for its support of socialist causes and for its articles offering advice on everyday struggles, making the most of America’s opportunities and encouraging children’s education. The terra cotta-clad building features medallions with faces of socialist heroes Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Karl Liebknecht and Ferdinand Lassalle above the entry, Vorwärtz in Yiddish at the building’s crown, and a clock at the parapet. The paper moved uptown in 1974 and the building was converted to condominiums in the 1990s. The Forward Building is a New York City Individual Landmark.

After returning to New York from Paris in 1929, photographer Berenice Abbott set out to document the changing landscape she encountered in the city. Despite initially struggling to find funding for this endeavor, Abbott was hired by the Federal Art Project to complete a collection that became known as Changing New York. Although Abbott’s focus was the city’s changing nature, examining her photographs almost a century later brings to light a contrasting theme: the continuity within the change; aspects of New York life that have remained constant through the decades, serving as a reflection of some of the many things that make New York New York.

Bialystoker Center and Home for the Aged, 228 East Broadway, ca. 1970. Designed by architect Harry Hurwit and built between 1929 and 1931 in the Art Deco style, the Bialystoker Center and Home for the Aged is the best known landsmanshaft— or immigrant hometown association, in the city. Bialystok, a Polish industrial city, was the hometown of a large population of Jewish immigrants to the Lower East Side. The community established a number of mutual benefit societies and a synagogue beginning in the 1860s. In the aftermath of the devastation of World War I, the a new Bialystoker group was organized to assist in foreign aid to Europe. In the 1920s the Center developed into an umbrella agency and meeting place for all of the Bialystoker groups, while also shifting focus to supporting Jewish communities within the city. Plans for a home for the aged necessitated a new building and the cornerstone for the stylized Art Deco struture was laid in 1929. The Bialystoker Home for Aged closed its doors in 2011 and has been empty since. (Though there was a massive effort in early 2017 to rescue and rehome the memorial plaques, religious books, and other sacred objects from the building.) The building and the plots on either side were sold together in 2016 and are being developed in to condos.

Man on the steps in front of 205 East Broadway. The tenement buildings at 201-203 East Broadway (at right) were home to the Adath Israel Synagogue and United Hebrew Community Jewish burial society, both established in 1901.

Church of St. Teresa, November 23, 1932. St. Teresa Catholic Church has occupied this Gothic Revival building since 1863 , but the edifice was not built for them. Completed 21 years earlier, the stone building was constructed as the Rutgers Presbyterian Church. The name of the architect has been lost to time, but he was at the forefront of ecclesiastical architecture. Here he chose an emerging style for New York City religious structures. The four clocks on the bell tower are considered the oldest hand-wound public clocks in the city. During the 20th century the structural integrity of the building suffered with age, culminating in the 1995 collapse of the vaulted ceiling, which rained 60,000 pounds of plaster though the main floor and into the basement. Facing possible demolition, the parish sold their adjacent property and air rights to fund the repair work. Along with this roof and interior reconstruction came also some restoration efforts, including work on the church's timepieces. The four belfry clocks had stopped functioning or their winding had long been ignored. (Photographic evidence suggests that the Rutgers Street clock face read 10:15 from the 1930s through the 1970s.) Today the church's facade, at nearly two centuries old, looks incredibly similar to what it would have looked like when built in 1842.

Garden Cafeteria, ca. 1977. Opened in June 1941 as the Garden Cafeteria by Charles Metzger, an Austrian immigrant, the restaurant and hall-for-hire was a popular meeting spot for writers of the Jewish Daily Forward (whose building was four doors down) and Jewish intellectuals. Supposedly a restaurant in this space dated to earlier in the century and was also popular among the Jewish Socialist crowd, including Leon Trotsky (who wrote for the Forward for a time in the 1910s). The Cafeteria was opened 24 hours a day and was very successful for Metzger. It was a dairy restaurant that adhered to Jewish dietary laws. Customers got a ticket upon arriving, and it got punched with every item you ordered over whatever period of time you were there. Patrons could sit for hours (and did) and paid for everything together before they left. The Cafeteria closed in 1983 and is currently a Chinese food restaurant.

197 East Broadway, ca. 1977. In 1889 the Educational Alliance was established as settlement house serving the Jewish immigrant population of the Lower East Side (though open to all races and creeds). It was the joint effort of the Aguilar Free Library Society, Hebrew Free Loan Association, and the Young Men's Hebrew Association. Their services included English language classes, educational citizenship classes, a theatre, an art school and recreational rooftop garden. Their headquarters were constructed in 1891 at 197 East Broadway. The Romanesque Revival building designed by Brunner and Tron was the central of all activity. An early supporter of the organization is Isidor Straus, philanthropist and co-owner of Macy's Department Store. He is named the president of the board in 1893 when a new board is convened following the YMHA departure from the partnership. When Straus dies in the sinking of the Titanic, the Educational Alliance is bequeathed $100,000 from his will. In the 20th century the Alliance Art School would see a number of its students go on to renown in the art world, including sculptors Chaim Gross and Concetta Scaravaglione, and painter Peter Bloom. By the 1950s, like many of the settlements houses that had survived, the Alliance shifted away from being volunteer run and introduced social services operated by trained professionals. Their later 20th century social services included running a Head Start group and Operation Street Corner, a program aimed at curbing teenage delinquency. Today the Educational Alliance continues to run its services and programs from its 1891 building.

On January 1, 1936, New York’s Lower East Side got its first subway stop, changing it from a land of crowded tenement dwellings and slums to a gentrified city district practically overnight. This is the story of the East Side Subway, איסט-סײַד אונטערבאַן. In Yiddish, the subway is called the unterban, though colloquially it was called the subvey which is how The Forward spelled it out for readers.

Bundled to keep warm, this woman stands with a pile of Forward and other newspapers to sell on the Lower East Side. Selling newspapers was not just a job for the “newsies,” street-smart, impoverished child laborers who hawked them on the streets. It was a rough-and- tumble game, with vendors zealously guarding their territory. East Broadway was hub for Yiddish papers, though they were widely sold throughout the City.

Entrance to 294 East Broadway, March 30, 1937.

Discussions of vaccinations in New York City have an interesting history. The city’s 1947 smallpox outbreak is notable both for being the last smallpox outbreak in America and for spurring the largest mass vaccination effort ever conducted for smallpox in the country.

Push carts at the corner of Essex and Hester Streets, ca. 1900. The store at the near corner, with “\[wines] & liquors” awning visible, is No. 28 Essex Street. Shortly after the turn of the century, this corner was cleared for the construction of P.S. 62, an intermediate school. Two decades later, that building was torn down to facilitate subway excavation. The campus was relocated to the former site of the Ludlow Street Jail.

5 Rutgers Place, ca. 1909. The Rutgers Place Bathhouse opened in 1909 and served as a pool and hygiene facility until the financial crisis of the 1970s forced its closure. Originally surrounded by tenements and brick rowhouses, today the building still stands, though long abandoned, surrounded by a very different neighborhood. In the 1950s the surrounding neighborhood was razed for the construction of the 1100 apartments of the NYCHA LaGuardia Houses, completed in 1957. It also is no longer officially at 5 Rutgers Place, as that street and its original cross street, Monroe, were wiped away in the development of the housing project. For decades the neighbors to the vacant and deteriorating building have advocated for either its demolition (as they say it is blight) or its complete restoration into a community facility once again. These conversations came to a head in 2007, but a decade later the building still stands empty and falling apart.

“Street scene of peddlers and street vendors on Hester Street on the Lower East Side in 1898.” At the turn of the century, Hester Street was known for its open-air push cart market, one of many hubs for Lower East Side vendors. The tenement buildings in this photo — likely on the North side of Hester Street, near Norfolk and Suffolk Streets — were soon demolished to make way for the campus of the P.S. 62 intermediate school, which opened in 1905.

Junction of Essex Street, Canal Street, East Broadway and Division Street, May 9, 1930. Seward Park, named after New York Senator and later Secretary of State William Henry Seward, is visible at center-left. Opened in October 1903, Seward Park features the first municipally-built playground in the United States.

At the intersection of East Broadway (left) and Canal Street (right), showing a view westward from Rutgers Street. On the extreme right, appears a portion of Seward Park. In the background on Canal Street, is seen the Canal Street station of the Second Ave. Elevated Line, and on East Broadway, a portion of the Manhattan Bridge. June 6, 1930.

Jewish heritage mural, Lower East Side, ca. 1978. The mural, which reads "Our Strength Is Our Heritage, Our Heritage Is Our Life," was painted in 1973 by local artists in association with the CITYArts group. It became a source of controversy in November, 2016, when a developer painted over the mural without consulting community groups, citing danger posed by loose paint and masonry falling from the wall.

Former Madison Street Mission, ca. 1973. Now an apartment house, 209 Madison Street, was originally built in 1886 as the Madison Street Mission. The mission, an extension of the First Mariners Methodist Church, closed in 1894. Later, 209 Madison Street became home to Etz Chaim Anshei Wolozin, a Jewish congregation with roots in present-day Belarus. They occupied the space for a number of years, but like many other Lower East Side synagogues, the building was converted into a residential property in 1933.

Park Row Building ARCHITECT: R. H. Robertson DATE: 1896-99 STYLE: Skyscraper The 30-story, 391-foot Park Row Building was the tallest building in New York City and one of the tallest structures in the world between 1899, the year of its completion, and 1908. It is one of several surviving late nineteenth-century buildings that formed Newspaper Row, the center of newspaper publishing in New York City from the 1840s to the 1920s. Among its many tenants, the building housed the offices of the Associated Press news agency, as well as the headquarters of August Belmont’s Interborough Rapid Transit Company. The great height and irregular plan of this building led to the use of innovative construction techniques including a pile and steel-grillage foundation, a Roehling concrete floor system for fireproofing, and Sprague Electric elevators to transport the thousands of people using the building each day.

View of 234 Cherry Street looking east from the roof of 102 Monroe Street, 1935. The Manhattan Bridge is visible in the background. Both No. 234 Cherry and the photographer's vantage point on Monroe Street were razed. Today, the site is part of the NYCHA Rutgers Houses, completed in 1965.

In the 1930s, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, one of New York's most powerful mayors, launched a war against an enemy that was ubiquitous on New York's streets: Pushcarts.

Kosher chicken market, Hester Street, ca. 1937.

⁣621 Water Street is a red-brick Renaissance style building that originally served as Gouverner Hospital. Constructed in stages beginning in 1897, it features unusual curved walls intended to help prevent the accumulation of dirt and germs, and wrap around balconies that provided access to fresh air for tuberculosis patients.⁣ ​​⁣ ​​The building became outdated and was abandoned in the 1960s. It remained vacant and under threat of demolition until 1991, when it was then purchased and rehabilitated by non-profit Community Access thanks to support from HPD. In 1994, it re-opened as Gouverneur Court, an affordable assisted living residence that continues to serve over 120 vulnerable New Yorkers!⁣ These photos from 1991 and 1993 by HPD photographer Larry Racioppo capture it before and during renovation. ​​

Abraham Cahan, leader, publisher, and writer, was the founding editor of the Forward, America's oldest independent Jewish news organization. Born in 1860, to an Orthodox family in Podberzhie a small shtetl near Vilna (Vilnius) Lithuania, in what is today Belarus, the unorthodox, socialist Cahan had been a revolutionary in his youth. He identified with the narodny (folks) movement that opposed the Czar and briefly believed in a kind of agricultural socialism. Escaping the Czar’s secret police along with his fellow communards of the Am Olam, movement, Cahan arrived in the U.S. in 1882 with the idea of creating agricultural communes here.

At the peak of its popularity, the Jewish Daily Forward erected a ten-story office building at 175 East Broadway designed by architect George Boehm and completed in 1912. The building includes marble columns, stained glass windows, and bas reliefs of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Ferdinand Lassalle (founder of the first mass German labor party) and a fourth portrait of an unknown man (thought to be some other German socialist). The Forward moved out of the building in 1974 and it was used as a Chinese church for some time. In the early 2000s the building was converted into condos.

There are many distinguished people featured in the Hall of Fame of Great Americans at Bronx Community College. One who stands apart as a true community leader is Lillian Wald, the nurse, activist, and author renowned for establishing the Henry Street Settlement (HSS) and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY).

Looking east on Canal Street from the intersection of Division Street. The tall building at left is the Jewish Daily Forward Building, designed by architect George Boehm and completed in 1912. The Jewish Daily Foward was founded in 1897 and was published in Yiddish. The paper is still published, with the English-language printed weekly and the Yiddish printed by-weekly.

Congregation Sons of Israel Kalwarie, ca. 1978. The Romanesque Revival synagogue was designed by Alfred E. Badt and completed in 1904. Also known as the Pike Street Shul, the synagogue closed in controversial circumstances, beginning in September 1979. Just prior to Rosh Hashanah, the trustees sold the building without notifying the congregation, beginning a 15-year legal battle which ended with its eventual sale to a developer. Though 13-15 Pike Street was made a New York City landmark in 1997, the designation came too late to save its original stained glass windows. Today, it is home to the Sung Tak Buddhist Temple.

Among its important qualities, Saint Augustine’s Chapel is a fine example of the small, masonry parish church. It displays an unusual and interesting feature in the introduction of Gothic windows into a building which, in general, adheres to the Georgian tradition of architecture. This church served for many years as the very attractive Chapel for a small section of the urban community.

Bialystoker Synagogue, ca, 1977. The fieldstone Methodist Episcopal Church was built in 1826, using Manhattan schist from a quarry on nearby Pitt Street. Founded by a group of Jews who came from town of Białystok in present-day Poland, the congregation purchased the building at 7 Willett Street in 1907.

“Looking west from the intersection of Division and Canal Streets at Ludlow Street.” The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, completed in 1973, are visible along Division Street, at left.

In 1912, the Forward built a grand, 10-story building at 175 East Broadway; its offices remained there until 1974. Two huge 30,000-watt neon rooftop signs proclaimed the paper’s name in glowing Yiddish (facing north) and English (facing south). The signs could be seen from East River bridges and all over the Lower East Side.

“Mikveh of the Lower East Side, 311-313 East Broadway. Originally Young Men's Benevolent Association.” 311-313 East Broadway has variously been home to: Wall Street broker James E. Betts (1842); an illegal “gambling house,” raided by police (1842); the Young Men’s Benevolent Association, a Jewish community organization who commissioned its current, eclectic designed building (1899-1914); the Arnold Toynbee House, later renamed the Grand Street Settlement (1918-1936); and the Mikvah of Lower East Side, a Jewish ritual bath house (1941-present). Today, a plaque reading “ritualarium” marks the entrance to the mikvah.

The Seward Park branch of The New York Public Library on Manhattan’s Lower East Side can trace its roots back to 1886, when the Aguilar Free Library Society founded it. The branch, which opened its doors at its current location on November 11, 1909, is located at the eastern edge of the park for which it is named. The four-story, red brick Renaissance Revival building was one of 65 NYPL branches built with funds from Andrew Carnegie, and it boasts high ceilings and arched windows designed by the firm Babb, Cook & Welch.

Foward Building ARCHITECT: George A. Boehm DATE: 1912 STYLE: Beaux-Arts, Skyscraper The Forward Building, a ten-story Beaux-Arts style skyscraper completed in 1912, is a major early work of architect George A. Boehn whose nearly fifty-year practice was distinguished by designs for public buildings in New York City and Westchester. The ten-story Forward Building remains to this day a towering presence within the context of its immediate Lower East Side neighborhood.

511 Grand Street ARCHITECT: Unknown DATE: 1827-28 STYLE: Federal 511 Grand Street House was constructed by real estate investors Henry Barclay and James Lent Along with its neighbor 513 Grand Street it is a rare surviving example of the Federal style in Manhattan. It retains its original 2½-story height, peaked roof with dormers and side entrance. It is three-bays wide due to the irregular shape of the lot. The house since the 1840s has continuously housed both residential tenants and businesses reflecting its location on Grand Street a major east-west thoroughfare.

The intersection of downtown's Canal and Essex has long been a favorite for seasonal Jewish holiday shopping. Specifically, for the date palm fronds, ritual citron fruits, myrtle and willow branches required for prayers on the Sukkoth, or sukes in Yiddish, harvest holiday. These are still only sold in the brief window of time that is the week after the Day of Atonement and the start of Sukkoth, usually by local community street vendors that build temporary pop-up kiosks just for that purpose.

The big, bold signage of the historic Lower East Side is part of its iconic legacy. From gold leaf Yiddish lettering on Kosher shop windows to gleaming neon marquees, the many big & busy storefront signs certainly contributed to the frenetic, frenzied atmosphere of the streets. And there are still some great signs in the neighborhood! But a lot has been lost, too. Here are some of our favorite signs we wish were still hanging around the Lower East Side today. There's a corresponding blog post to go along with this story (plus an extra sign that's not in this list!) at www.eldridgestreet.org/blog/lessigns!

"Beth Abraham Chasidim D'Slonim Synagogue, June 6, 1930. The congregation, named for the city of Slonim in present-day Belarus, was organized in 1897. The synagogue appears on early 20th century maps, though a building existed on its lot much earlier. In subsequent years, congregations associated with other Eastern European immigrant communities worshipped there. By the mid 1980s (when its lot is vacant in tax photos), the synagogue had been was demolished. The Rabbi Jacob Joseph School (left), organized in 1901, was built in 1912-3."

After the 1929 stock market crash and ensuing Great Depression, selling apples became a popular way to help now-unemployed New Yorkers eke out a living.

East Broadway, ca. 1980. Signs mark a diverse set of storefront shops and offices. From left: Mobile Crisis Unit of Gouverneur Hospital (No. 185); West Lake Noodle Co. Inc, Sun Trading Co. (No. 183); E.Bway Kosher Bakery (No. 181).

The longtime home of the Jewish Daily Forward sits on East Broadway between Rutgers and Jefferson Streets. Since its construction in 1912, the Forward Newspaper building has been a staple of the Lower East Side. Today, it is a testament to the neighborhood’s changing landscape. The Forward Newspaper Under the leadership of its founding editor Abraham Cahan, the Forward not only served as the Jewish immigrant community’s most significant news source, but also granted the community a voice. Starting in 1902, Cahan invited readers to send their stories and responses to topical questions such as ‘May a women wear rouge?’ and ‘Can a socialist go to synagogue for Rosh Hashanah?’ The newspaper’s most popular section was an advice column titled ‘The Bintel Brief.’ Readers posed questions to the editors on lighthearted and serious themes. One struggling reader, who was losing his job, wrote the paper wondering whether he should keep a portion of his income or give it to his blind father in Russia. The editors advised him to give the money to his ailing father as the reader, a young man, remained employable. The Forward building exemplified the newspaper’s importance. It continues to be one of the tallest buildings in the neighborhood and arguably one of the most beautiful. Elegant terra-cotta designs and classical figures adorn its facade. Neighborhood lore claims that Abraham Cahan wanted the entire neighborhood to see the building. After Word War II, the newspaper declined as the worldwide population of Yiddish speaking people shrank and assimilation took hold in the United States. In 1983, to save the paper, an English language supplement was created. Today, The Forward exists with a rich on-line presence of over one million monthly visitors. The newspaper is no longer Socialist leaning, but continues to report on politics, art and culture. A Chinese Church and Bible Factory Just as the newspaper was forced to adapt, so has the building. In 1974, with falling readership, the newspaper sold it to the Lau family, who transformed the bottom floors into a Chinese church and the top floors into a bible factory. Luxury Apartments In 2004, developers Ronald Castellano and Christopher Hayes took over the building and converted it into luxury apartments. A one bedroom apartment recently sold for 1.545 million dollars, and Oscar winning actress Tatum O’Neal once owned an apartment in the building. Amenities include 24 hour doorman, roof deck and a refrigerator in the lobby to store perishable deliveries. Fortunately, the facade is a landmark. Relics of its previous life remain, including the decorative busts of Socialist leaders Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, who gaze down on today’s capitalist tenants. The Forward building epitomizes the changing landscape of the Lower East Side. The neighborhood first took shape with the arrival of immigrants at the turn of the 20th century and became a bustling and crowded hub. But as gentrification spread across New York City, the area underwent transformation. Instead of the classic Jewish delicatessen and other Jewish stores, there are art galleries, vegan restaurants and organic supermarkets. The neighborhood once housed the city’s most impoverished communities; now, it inhabits the city’s most affluent. The Museum At Eldridge Street, preserves the Lower East Side’s history, while as a cultural institution it is also arguably part of the gentrification equation.

Back in 1930, a year into this country’s greatest economic depression, everyone’s favorite Yiddish newspaper was getting spooky with their ads. This Yiddish Forverts Breyer’s ice cream ad for Halovin featured witches soaring and a 2 quart special order nut filled pumpkin flavored ice cream Jack- o’- lantern. Other unique flavor combos for the holiday were on offer, such as ‘choconut’ and orange as well as Halloween decorative novelties including cats, dried colored corn and skulls. Given the pagan, death centric holiday that is Halloween, it wasn't a natural with the Forward's immigrant readership. Forward former Executive Editor and Whiskey Correspondent Dan Friedman recalled it best "For the Jewish community — coming from Europe — the devilish practices of Halloween were not only bewildering but also threatening. Yes, we could come to terms with people walking the streets dressed in costumes, but it was harder to understand an alien custom where people banged on our front doors demanding goods — promising retribution if they weren’t satisfied. “Trick or treat” seemed, if not quite a pogrom, a lose-lose proposition. As indeed perhaps it still does." And yet, the Yiddish paper had done a lot of public service journalism on behalf of Halloween for its readership. Mystical Yiddish writer and poet Dovid Einhorn spent columns of text explaining the early Druid roots to Halloween. The Forward's Jay Grayson, normally on the sports beat, clearly had time to spare and contributed his thoughts on how Jewish parents ought to permit their children to go out trick or treating. Don't fear the doorbell ringing on Halloween, he advised. Do as the Americans do and generously offer free candy to the strangers in costumes! And as far as Breyer's-the Forward had what to say on the topic of ice cream as well, with Friedman initiating a series on Jews and ice cream (with staff doing the tastings!), and former Forward Middle East Correspondent Naomi Zeveloff uncovering their own family relationship to the Haagen-Daazs mishpokhe. What's left to say except, L'chaim Halovin!