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.

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 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.

Broome Street, northside, east from Willett Street. Public School No. 34 is the third building from the left, June 6, 1930.

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.

2020 sure has been a whirlwind! Here are some interesting facts, stories, and images from throughout the five boroughs that we dug up along the way.

The Amalgamated Dwellings, one of the oldest housing cooperatives in the United States, was the second cooperative sponsored by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, after the successful Amalgamated Cooperative Apartments in the Bronx. The six-story Art Deco building with 236 apartments was designed by the architects Springsteen & Goldhammer and was completed in 1930 at the site of a former printing plant. The building covered one city block, with a protected garden in the center.

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.

In the first half of the 20th century, Jewish boxers were some of the most famous and feared athletes in the country.

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.

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

"22 to 4 (left to right) Columbia Street, east side, south from Broome (left), to but not including Grand (right) Streets, June 6, 1930." Meyer Lansky lived with his parents in an apartment in No. 6 (second building from right) in the early 1920s. It was while they lived here that the teenaged Lansky became acquainted with his (also infamous) friends Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (who lived at 36 Columbia Street) and Charlie “Lucky” Luciano ( who lived at 265 East 10th Street).

Rivington Street, north side, at Columbia Street. The view shows the De Witt Memorial Church at No. 280 Rivington Street, between Columbia and Cannon Streets. These buildings were reported to be over congested with 1 building having 98 people in 62 rooms!

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.

3-5 Corlears Street, March 4, 1937. This building at the corner of Corlears and Monroe Streets housed trolley cars. In 1956, the building was demolished for the development of the Corlears Hook Houses. Corlears Hook was the name for the part of the Van Corlears bowerie (farm) in Dutch times that jutted out into the East River.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Children at play on Water Street and Jackson Street across from Corlears Hook Park, 1938. These buildings would soon be demolished ahead of the construction of the Vladek Houses, a New York City Housing Authority development. Construction on the Vladek houses, named for NYCHA board member Baruch Charney Vladeck, stated in September, 1939 and was completed in November, 1940.

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.

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.

At the intersection of Grand (right) and Henry (left) at Columbia Streets. The frame structure shown directly at the apex, is A.N. Gilbert's Drug Store. The Spire shown on the left, is that of All Saints Free Church (Episcopal), April 1929.

546-556 Grand Street, 1932. No. 550 is the three-story, wood-frame building with a brick front at center. Between 1914 and 1920, the (later) infamous mobster Meyer Lansky lived with his parents in two different apartments on this block. In 1914 they moved into a third floor apartment at 546 Grand Street (at left) and in 1917 they moved a few doors down into an apartment at no. 552 (just to the right of the short building).

⁣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. ​​

Congregation Morgan Abraham, ca. 1985. Built circa 1845 and originally constructed for the First Methodist Protestant Church, the Greek Revival building was occupied by a second church before it became a synagogue by the start of the 20th century. The first Jewish community to use the house of worship was the First Congregation Galiz Duckler Mogen Abaraham in 1905. They were a congregation of immigrants from Galicia, a historic region near modern day Poland and Ukraine. The synagogue later was called simply Congregation Morgan Abraham. Still standing and functioning as a house of worship in the early 1970s, it was the only synagogue in the city without indoor plumbing. The front wall of the building collapsed in 1989 and the building was soon after demolished.

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.

“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.

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.

174 Delancey Street, viewed from the Williamsburg Bridge. Detail of upper stories.

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.