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.

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

The Bialystoker Synagogue, 1930.

In the 1930s, today’s East Village and Lower East Side, long the country’s most crowded and notorious slum, was being dramatically transformed. The nation’s first federally-subsidized public housing was being built. Immigration from Europe, once the neighborhood’s lifeblood, had been cut off by restrictive laws, though new laws granting citizenship to residents of Puerto Rico precipitated the beginnings of what would, in the post-WWII years, become a massive migration of residents from the island to this neighborhood. Tenements were being demolished to make way for widened streets and new subway lines running throughout the neighborhood. And a new, innovative park was being planned for this poor, immigrant neighborhood. One of the most dramatic and lasting transformations of the neighborhood took place on July 27, 1939, when the first sections of the East River Park opened with great fanfare at an event presided over by Robert Moses and Mayor La Guardia. The roughly 50-acre, 1.5 mile-long park, which stretches from 12th to Montgomery Streets, has served generations of locals. But after 80 years, it’s future is uncertain, as the City has decided to protect Lower Manhattan from rising sea levels and flooding by demolishing the current park and rebuilding it ten feet higher. East River Park was conceived by Robert Moses in the 1930s as the East River Drive (renamed the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive in 1945) was built. While Moses enjoys a reputation as a callous, car-centric destroyer of neighborhoods, he was also responsible for building tens of thousands of acres of parks and beaches in New York City and surrounding areas. East River Park was built on landfill, replacing an industrial area of warehouses and piers that largely served the coal and lumber industries. This shoreline transformation to parkland was the first of its kind in New York City, preceding Hudson River Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, and others by many decades. As reported by the NY Times on July 27, 1939, “The park to be opened today has tennis courts, wading pools, fields for football, baseball, field hockey, softball and soccer. There are also volley ball, basketball, handball, shuffleboard, hand tennis, paddle tennis, and horseshoe-pitching courts. A roller-skating rink will be frozen over for ice skating in winter, and an open-air dance floor will be similarly concerted in cold weather.” In the 1930s, today’s East Village and Lower East Side, long the country’s most crowded and notorious slum, was being dramatically transformed. The nation’s first federally-subsidized public housing was being built. Immigration from Europe, once the neighborhood’s lifeblood, had been cut off by restrictive laws, though new laws granting citizenship to residents of Puerto Rico precipitated the beginnings of what would, in the post-WWII years, become a massive migration of residents from the island to this neighborhood. Tenements were being demolished to make way for widened streets and new subway lines running throughout the neighborhood. And a new, innovative park was being planned for this poor, immigrant neighborhood. One of the most dramatic and lasting transformations of the neighborhood took place on July 27, 1939, when the first sections of the East River Park opened with great fanfare at an event presided over by Robert Moses and Mayor La Guardia. The roughly 50-acre, 1.5 mile-long park, which stretches from 12th to Montgomery Streets, has served generations of locals. But after 80 years, it’s future is uncertain, as the City has decided to protect Lower Manhattan from rising sea levels and flooding by demolishing the current park and rebuilding it ten feet higher. East River Park was conceived by Robert Moses in the 1930s as the East River Drive (renamed the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive in 1945) was built. While Moses enjoys a reputation as a callous, car-centric destroyer of neighborhoods, he was also responsible for building tens of thousands of acres of parks and beaches in New York City and surrounding areas. East River Park was built on landfill, replacing an industrial area of warehouses and piers that largely served the coal and lumber industries. This shoreline transformation to parkland was the first of its kind in New York City, preceding Hudson River Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, and others by many decades. As reported by the NY Times on July 27, 1939, “The park to be opened today has tennis courts, wading pools, fields for football, baseball, field hockey, softball and soccer. There are also volley ball, basketball, handball, shuffleboard, hand tennis, paddle tennis, and horseshoe-pitching courts. A roller-skating rink will be frozen over for ice skating in winter, and an open-air dance floor will be similarly concerted in cold weather.” East River Park is the largest park in Manhattan south of Central Park, and must have been a profound and welcome change for the surrounding residents. I c...

The Rivington Street Bath House at 326 Rivington Street, later renamed the Baruch Bath House, was the first in the city to be built with public funds. The ground-breaking for the bathhouse took place in December 1897; it opened on March 23, 1901.

Our Lady of Sorrows Roman Catholic Church, 213 Stanton Street, ca. 1973. The Church of Our Lady of Sorrows is located in an area once known as Kleindeutschland, Little Germany. Established in 1867, it ministered to the large number of German Catholics who migrated to New York in the late 19th century. The church, designed by Henry Engelbert, was built with a combination of Victorian, Byzantine, and Romanesque architectural styles and completed in 1868.  By the early 1910s, much of the German population on the Lower East Side had moved uptown. In their place were multitudes of newly-arrived Italian immigrants, and then later, Hispanic. Despite these shifts in neighborhood demographic, the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows had adapted to its surroundings to serve the changing congregations. By 2000, masses were offered in Spanish and English; the church today is also known as Nuestra Señora de los Dolores.

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.

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

446 Avenue D; 422 East Houston Street Building Date : 1901 Original Use : Institutional Original Owner : New York City Original Architect : Charles B.J. Snyder Description & Building Alterations Public School 188, or The Island School, is a five-story brick structure. It was the only building on this block not demolished to make way for the Lillian Wald Houses. It was designed by Charles B.J. Snyder and built in 1901. Snyder had a remarkable career with the Board of Education spanning thirty-one years, in which he set a new standard for municipal architecture. He served as Superintendent of School Buildings from 1891-1923. A 1902 New York Times article deemed this building “the largest public school in all the United States, and probably the world.” The building features terra cotta and limestone trimmings and follows an H-plan design, increasing the amount of light and ventilation in circulation. Snyder was the first architect to fireproof school buildings. He made sure that 5,000 children inside would be able to reach the street within three to four minutes. This building originally featured rooftop playgrounds, four rooms for manual training, large libraries, and a spacious gymnasium. Many of the windows are original

Hamilton Fish Library, date unknown. Designed by Carrère & Hastings and opened in 1909, the library was named for American statesman, Hamilton Fish, who was governor of New York and Secretary of State under Ulysses S. Grant. The building included a large open air roof area used for library functions.The building was razed during the widening of Houston Street in the 1950s. A public housing project now stands at its original site. A new Hamilton Fish Park Branch opened at 415 East Houston Street in 1960.

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.

Hamilton Fish Park, ca. 1982. Completed in 1900, this small park was named for Hamilton Fish, a Governor of New York, a United States Senator, and United States Secretary of State. The original park was formal in style with a Beaux-Arts Gymnasium, sculpted water fountains, symmetrical plant beds, and trees. After only three years, the park was renovated to include active recreation such as track and tennis. In 1936 the park was further altered by the addition of a WPA pool (one of 11 pools opened that summer). Today the park included the pool, a community center in the old gymnasium (with meeting rooms for neighborhood groups), basketball courts, handball courts, and children's playgrounds.

"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).

Nos. 90-94 Sheriff Street, unknown date. By the mid-1960s, the tenement buildings pictured had been razed for the development of the Masaryk Towers, six middle-income housing cooperatives built under the auspices of New York's Mitchell-Lama Housing Program. The towers — named for Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia — opened in 1967. In recent years, the Masaryk board of directors has come under fire for restricting access to a de-mapped stretch of Rivington Street running through the development.

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!

Vacant lot at East 3rd and Lewis Streets, 1938. The brick tenement at center-left is No. 382. A decade later, these buildings would be razed for the development of the NYCHA Lillian Wald Houses (completed in 1950). Out of frame to the right and casting a large shadow is P.S. 188, which still stands on the north side of Houston Street. The northeastern corner of the school building is still labeled “Lewis Street.”

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.

135 Ridge Street, at the southwest corner of Stanton Street. J. Leskowitz, a clothier and tailor, had his shop on the ground floor, while surgeon and dentist Dr. S. Jaeger had his practice on the second floor.

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.

Carpathian Russian Orthodox Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity, April 26, 1935. Constructed in 1892, this church first served the Slovak and Hungarian immigrant community. From 1918 1o 1975 it was a Russian Eastern Orthodox Church, and from 1975 until recently was the home of a little-known Catholic sect that practices the Mozarabic rite (possibly the only congregation of its kind in the United States).

Nos. 328-334 Stanton Street, ca. 1937.

Hamilton Fish Pool, 1936. Designed in 1898 by Carrère & Hastings (of later NYPL building fame) the Hamilton Fish Park Gymnasium opened in 1900. The building, a grand Beaux Arts structure, was constructed as the first phase of the park's construction, and had only a small fountain and grassy area with benches surrounding it. In 1903 more recreational venues were constructed including tennis courts and a running track. In June of 1936 the WPA pool opened adjacent to the elaborate gymnasium. In 1952 the U.S. Olympic Team used the pool for practice sessions before the Helsinki Olympics. Hamilton Fish Park (named for a 19th century New York politician) underwent a $14 million restoration in the early 1990s, including upkeep on the pool. The gymnasium was granted landmark status in 1982 and is today used as a community center.

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).

Israel Orphan Asylum Though now an 11-story apartment building built in 1997, occupies this lot, the lot is so large because, according to historic maps, a Methodist church once stood on the site. This church can be dated back to 1853. As of 1914, the church had been demolished and turned into the Israel Orphan Asylum owned by the Austrian Hebrew Free Burial and Orphan Asylum Association, which was a three-story brick tenement building. A historic New York Times article from 1918 says that this was the largest Jewish orphanage on the East Side. A man named Gustave Hartman, a judge and Jewish community leader, founded this orphanage. Originally it was for male children ages one to six, but later opened to girls and children up to age fourteen. Many of these children were wartime orphans. Hartman financed the orphanage on his own and through fundraising. He died in 1936. 12,000 people attended his funeral and 85 police officers were needed to control the crowds. His wife continued to run the orphanage after his death. The small triangular plot of land located at 2nd Street and Avenue C was named the Gustave Hartman Triangle and still keeps that name today. Jewish orphanages were a prominent fixture in New York during this time.

This remarkably intact Gothic Revival church’s form, design, details, and history reflect the kaleidoscope of immigrants and ethnic groups which called the Lower East Side home and shaped New York over the last century and a quarter — making it not just architecturally significant but an embodiment of New York City’s and the East Village’s immigrant history. This structure was originally built in 1891-92 and designed by Edward Wenz for the Church of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, serving the surrounding Slovak and Hungarian immigrant community. The church was the first national Slovak parish for the Slovak and Hungarian Catholics of New York and Brooklyn. Later the building was bought by the Russian Greek Orthodox National Association and became the Carpathian Russian Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas. It served the emerging Russian immigrant community in the early and mid-twentieth century, as evidenced by the royal seal of the Russian Czars located on the church’s front gates. After 1975, the church housed San Isidoro y San Leandro Western Orthodox Catholic Church of Hispanic Mozarabic Rite, a highly unusual Western Orthodox Catholic Church – seemingly one of the very few in America, and one of the few or perhaps only to practice the Mozarabic Rite. Two-headed eagle, symbolic of the Russian Empire, at the iron fence in front of the church Edward Wenz was a successful architect well known for his design of many speculative builders’ work, particularly residential structures in upper Manhattan. Born in Germany in 1855, he migrated to the United States and settled in New York City in 1880. It is not clear where Edward Wenz received his architectural education, but it is recorded that he started to practice architectural design as early as 1887. One of his most notable works, the Park View Flats on Central Park West between 103rd and 104th Streets (1893, demolished) was a combination of nine handsome apartment houses that occupied the entire block front facing Central Park. The Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide of 1893 described it as among the year’s most notable structures along Central Park West. The early years of the Church of St. Elizabeth of Hungary were marked by instability and a constantly changing series of pastors and priests. From 1892 to 1895, in merely three years, three different pastors were appointed to replace the previous one. Conflicts between the Slovaks, who originally founded the church, and an increasing number of Hungarians that later became the majority of the congregation, intensified in 1895, resulting in the withdrawal of the Slovaks. In spite of this instability in its early decades, St. Elizabeth’s eventually became a leading Hungarian church in the city. In 1905, under the direction of the church pastor Francis C. Denes, who replaced the previous Slovak priest, a Hungarian Catholic Club was established, for which the Hungarian Consul-General served as the chairman. Denes’ apartment, which was on the top floor of the church building, hosted the first meeting of the club. As Central Europeans began to move uptown to neighborhoods like Yorkville, the Church of St. Elizabeth also relocated to East 83rd Street. As more Eastern Europeans moved into the neighborhood in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the church was sold to the Russian Greek Orthodox National Association, Inc. in 1918 for $18,500. Eastern Orthodoxy is a form of Christianity that diverged from Roman Catholicism in late antiquity and centered in Eastern Europe and in the Eastern Mediterranean. Separate national churches would evolve and these Eastern Orthodox churches would have a major presence in America with the immigration of the Eastern Europeans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The see of the Russian Orthodox Church in America was moved from Alaska to San Francisco by 1880, but with the wave of immigration to New York from Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, the see was moved to New York City in 1905. The Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church sold the property in 1975 and it became the home to San Isidoro y San Leandro Western Orthodox Catholic Church of the Hispanic Mozarabic Rite. Western Rite Orthodoxy, Western Orthodoxy, and Orthodox Western Rite are terms used to describe congregations and groups which are in communion with Eastern Orthodox Churches or Oriental Orthodox Churches, but which use traditional Western liturgies rather than adopting Eastern liturgies such as the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.

Apartment building at 193-197 Stanton Street. Storefronts include a “pocket billiards” parlor, plumbing supply shop, and “J Leskowitz, Mfr. of Mohair, Alpaca & Tropical Suits.”

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.

Houston Street — that's HOW-stun, for the first-time visitors — has seen many changes since it was mapped as the southern boundary of Manhattan's famous street grid under the Commissioners' Plan of 1811. In fact, the 1811 plan was the first time the street, named for William Houstoun, was spelled "Houston." The misspelling stuck. Houstoun was the Georgia-born son of Sir Patrick Houstoun, a Scottish aristocrat and member of the state's colonial Government. The younger Houstoun represented Georgia at the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention of 1787, where he met Mary Bayard, of the prominent Manhattan family, whom he married in 1788. The original segment of Houstoun's namesake street was part of the Bayard family's property. Over the ensuing decades, Houston was merged with neighboring thoroughfares (North Street on the east side; Hammersley Street on the west) until it spanned the breadth of the entire island. This walk covers the tumultuous early decades of the 20th century, when subway construction and increased automobile traffic molded Houston into its current form. Let's take a look!

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.

141 Attorney Street (at the far right) is the only building in this photo that current still stands. The school in the center (P.S. 174) was demolished and Attorney Street was severed by a cul-de-sac.

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.

Hamilton Fish Pool, under construction, April 26, 1935.

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

Hamilton Fish Park Gymnasium, June 29, 1938.

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.