Anshe Chesed and Rodeph Sholom are respectively the oldest and second oldest surviving synagogue buildings in the city, and some of the oldest in the country. Both were constructed for German Jewish congregations in German architectural styles: Gothic Revival and Rundbogenstil (“round-arch style”), and feature red brick, central staircases and symmetrical façades with recessed central sections and square towers. Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue is the only Greek Synagogue in New York and the only synagogue of Romaniote Jews in the Western Hemisphere. The Eldridge Street Synagogue was America’s first major house of worship built by Eastern European Orthodox Jews. The yellow brick building features Moorish and Romanesque details and rich ornament. At its peak in the early 20th century, the synagogue hosted as many as 1,000 worshippers at services, but was forced to close in the mid-20th century when the area’s Jewish population began to dwindle. In 1986, the Eldridge Street Project funded a large-scale restoration of the building, which was repurposed as a museum. The Former Congregation Anshe Chesed, Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and the Former Eldridge Street Synagogue are all designated New York City Individual Landmarks.

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.

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Rivington Street, north side, west from Ludlow Street, showing a station of the Second Ave. Elevated Line on Allen Street.

Anshe Chesed and Rodeph Sholom are respectively the oldest and second oldest surviving synagogue buildings in the city, and some of the oldest in the country. Both were constructed for German Jewish congregations in German architectural styles: Gothic Revival and Rundbogenstil (“round-arch style”), and feature red brick, central staircases and symmetrical façades with recessed central sections and square towers. Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue is the only Greek Synagogue in New York and the only synagogue of Romaniote Jews in the Western Hemisphere. The Eldridge Street Synagogue was America’s first major house of worship built by Eastern European Orthodox Jews. The yellow brick building features Moorish and Romanesque details and rich ornament. At its peak in the early 20th century, the synagogue hosted as many as 1,000 worshippers at services, but was forced to close in the mid-20th century when the area’s Jewish population began to dwindle. In 1986, the Eldridge Street Project funded a large-scale restoration of the building, which was repurposed as a museum. The Former Congregation Anshe Chesed, Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and the Former Eldridge Street Synagogue are all designated New York City Individual Landmarks.

108 East 1st Street Building Date : 1841 Original Use : Residential Original Owner : George H. Rofs Original Architect : Unknown Description & Building Alterations As evidenced by the tax records and map evidence this was a row house built 1840-41 and a rear building was constructed in 1853 (later demolished). As of the 1903 map it is identified as a synagogue. This is a three-story brick building with Romanesque elements and Gothic pointed arches, including four pilasters on the front above the first story, a rounded entrance arch and arched windows on the third and first stories. The stepped pediment at the top of the building is adorned with a Star of David, reflecting the building’s former use as a synagogue.

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

Grand and Allen Streets, from the Allen Street meridian mall. From 1878 to 1942, the Second Avenue El ran over Allen Street. In the early 1930s, the demolition of buildings on the street’s East side made room for what is now the eastern roadway, with the elevated tracks occupying the western side and a pedestrian mall in between. The storefront at 315 Grand is Goldman & Ostrow, “distributors of national advertised brands of infants and children’s wear.”

24 Avenue A, 148-152 2nd Street Building Date : 1915 Original Use : Residential/Commercial Original Owner : Claws Realty and Construction Company, Inc. Original Architect : Charles B. Meyers Description & Building Alterations Built in 1915 as a new law tenement by Charles B. Meyers, this six-story corner building replaced several early brownstones. Modestly ornamented, the building exhibits an eclectic style but demonstrates the changing trend toward a less ornate, more stylized, geometric ornamentation that would become popular during the Art Deco movement. While it is not clear what the original shop was, by 1935 there was a furniture store in the building (like most of its neighbors on Avenue A), called Diamond & Cooperberg Colonial Furniture.

205 East Houston Street, ca. 1975. Ludlow Street façade of Katz's Delicatessen, 205 East Houston Street. In 1888, the Iceland brothers established what is now known as Katz’s Delicatessen on the east side of Ludlow Street, opposite its present location. Upon the arrival of Willy Katz in 1903, the establishment's name was changed from Iceland Brothers to Iceland & Katz, and later to just Katz's when the Icelands sold their share. Katz’s moved to the west side of Ludlow Street during the mid-1930s, due to construction of the Houston-Essex Street Line segment of the IND Sixth Avenue Line subway.

Named for a grove of fruit trees on the DeLancey estate that comprised much of this area, Orchard Street is characterized by its tenements and history as a commercial thoroughfare, hosting many prosperous shops and street vendors. The five-story pre-law tenement at number 97 was purchased by the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in 1988 to interpret the history of immigration to the area. It is estimated that roughly 7,500 people from 25 countries resided in the building until it was sealed due to non-compliance with City housing codes in 1935. The six-story, red brick, Queen-Anne-style Old Law tenement at number 14-16 features a fanciful cornice and terra-cotta Stars of David, a feature shared by its sister building at number 47. 97 Orchard is listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places.

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

Since its founding in 1973 by a group of Puerto Rican artists, poets and intellectuals, the Nuyorican Poets Café has become a cultural icon in New York City. “Nuyorican,” a word that blends “New York” and “Puerto Rican,” refers to the movement begun by Puerto Rican artists to battle social injustice and find empowerment through intellectual and cultural expression. The Café became a venue for displaying and digesting such creative expression, especially poetry and spoken word, but also theater, music, visual arts and film. Originally located in the living room of poet Miguel Algarin’s East Village apartment, the founders purchased this former tenement building in 1980. The Café, a highly respected nonprofit arts organization, continues to host an array of award-winning performances, educational programs and exhibits, and to provide support for fledgling artists and serves as an important cultural touchstone for the city.

17-21 Avenue A Building Date : 1838-39 Original Use : Residential Original Owner : Ebenezer Baptist Church (35), Azor Hoyt (36) Original Architect : Unknown Description & Building Alterations This lot consists of two separate buildings which were joined together in 1933 and were originally built 1838-39 according to the tax records. One, the historic lot 35 (19-21 Avenue A) is a four story, five bay brick loft building, painted white and originally it was built as a church and it was altered in the 1870’s to its present form (see permits). The middle bay’s windows have been filled in. It has two-story plate glass front (added in 1914). The historic lot 36 (17 Avenue A) is a four story, three-bay unpainted brick building that was built as a row house. Records show that it once had a galvanized iron cornice, but it has been removed. A 51-foot long sign spans the fronts of both buildings above the first story.

The Bialystoker Synagogue, 1930.

Flower and garment shops, Orchard Street, ca. 1975.

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.

Shoppers on Essex Street, ca. 1975. In the mid-1970s, Essex Street remained an important hub for business serving the Lower East Side’s Jewish community.

The Lower East Side was not a wealthy neighborhood in the late 19th century, and it was common for Jewish congregations to pray in converted spaces rather than pay to build something to their specifications. Built as a church in 1860, this building became home to the Orthodox German-Jewish congregation Shaaray Hashomayim (“Gates of the Heavens”) in 1864. It was common for congregations like this to frequently move locations, finding nicer (or cheaper, depending on their needs) accommodations in other buildings. So Gates of the Heavens left this building in 1889 and it reverted to use as a church again. It became a synagogue once again in 1902 - this time as home to the unrelated congregation with a similar name, Shaaray Shomayim (also meaning Gates of Heaven). They remained in the building for over 100 years. Its design was described as “eclectic Byzantine” and it was the largest in the area, holding 1800 worshipers. Sound reverberated spectacularly in this space and it became known as the “Cantor’s Carnegie Hall”, hosting such famous Chazzans as Yossele Rosenblatt, Moshe Koussevitzky, Zavel Kwartin, Moishe Oysher, Jan Pearce and Richard Tucker. Red Buttons sang in the choir and Edward G. Robinson had his Bar Mitzvah there. Like most synagogues in the area, congregation numbers slowly dwindled through the 20th century until just a handful of congregants remained by the 2000s. The congregation persevered only through the efforts of Rabbi Yaakov Spiegel, who led the synagogue from 1981-2001; in June 2003, that swath of Rivington was named “Rabbi Yaakov Spiegel Way” in his honor. But by December 2005, the building had sustained too much damage to be safe and services were moved to a nearby home. In January 2006, the synagogue’s roof collapsed, and the building was demolished two months later.

Shops on Orchard Street, ca. 1975.

Numerous health facilities were established in New York City following the outbreak of HIV and AIDS cases in the 1980s. From 1993 to 1994, this building was converted to Rivington House, a VillageCare-operated nursing home for people living with AIDS. The architecture firms of Perkins & Will and Davis, Brody & Associates were responsible for the conversion. Rivington House opened in 1995 as the largest residential healthcare facility for AIDS patients in New York City and, perhaps, the nation. Equipped with 219 beds and an outpatient treatment center, it was originally considered an end-of-life nursing home for most of its patients; length of stay was 12 to 15 days and the death rate stood at nearly 50%. By 1997, new drug therapies were prolonging the lives of many people living with AIDS and, as a result, the death rate at Rivington House declined by 20% and the length of stay increased to 120 days.

Streit’s Matzos factory at the corner of Suffolk and Rivington Streets. The Streit family produced matzo at this location from 1925 to June 2015.

Second Avenue El over the western roadway of Allen Street, July 20, 1929.

Brick tenement with pitched roof and single dormer at No. 372 Grand Street, ca. 1902. The corner building, which may have dated to the 1850s was then listed as No. 374 Grand. The ground floor storefront provided a variety of wares, including stoves, radiators, and cookware.

Rivington Street, between Allen and Orchard Streets, January 17, 1928. Orchard Street’s informal pushcart market spilled onto neighboring blocks. The cart in the foreground, “Isidore’s Hot Frankfurters,” advertises “a nickel meal,” of three frankfurters, “served tastefully.”

Manhattan Boot Black Supply, 254 Broome Street. The street is named after John Broome, an early city alderman and lieutenant governor of New York from 1804-1810.

Adolf Mandel Bank, Rivington Street. February 16, 1912. Local pick-pockets started a rumor that the bank’s safe was insecure, in order to spark a run on the bank, and then to rob concerned customers who had made withdrawals. Nearly a thousand people waited on Rivington Street to access their deposits.

Loew's Delancey Theater, 140-146 Delancey Street. In 1911, tenement buildings with Jewish storefronts were demolished to make way for the Loew’s Theater, which opened in 1912 and remained in operation until 1977.

The southeast corner of Suffolk and Rivington Streets, 1910. Rivington Street is named after James Rivington. A "supposed" Loyalist who wrote a Loyalist newspaper, the New York Gazetteer, later The Royal Gazette, Rivington was covertly part of the Culper Spy Ring, which supplied George Washington with information.

This architectural drawing shows plans for a grand public bath house on Allen Street. The building, built in 1905, operated as a bath house until 1975, when once again the changing demographics of the neighborhood no longer necessitated a public bath house. But at the time, a new generation of Lower East Sider was arriving, and they repurposed this building for their own needs. Since 1975, the old bath houses are home to The Church of Grace to Fujianese, a Christian Chinese congregation. The church added a cross and the name of their congregation, in two languages, to the facade, but scalloped shells etched in the stone facade remain as reminders of the building’s original use.

Corn Exchange Bank and Trust Company branch, 1931. This branch was completed in February 1931, replacing a branch in an older building at the northwest corner of Grand and Norfolk Streets. The Corn Exchange Bank, founded in 1853, merged with the Chemical Bank in 1954 and, through a series of further mergers, has since been folded into the holdings of JPMorgan Chase.

The Ludlow Street Jail, New York City's 19th-century federal prison, opened in 1862 at the corner of Ludlow and Broome Streets. Intended as a prison for civil offenders, most inmates were debtors. The infamous Tammany Hall politician Boss Tweed was held at Ludlow Street, where he died of pneumonia in 1878, at the time unable to repay some $6 million of embezzled city funds. Victoria Woodhull, the first female presidential candidate, was also imprisoned for six months in 1872, accused of sending obscene material in the mail. The jail closed in December 1927 and was subsequently demolished. Today, the Department of Education’s Seward Park Campus, built in 1929, occupies the site.

Ratner’s was a famous Jewish kosher dairy restaurant, founded in 1905 by Jacob Harmatz and his brother-in-law Alex Ratner. The pair supposedly flipped a coin to decide whose name would be on the sign. Originally located on Pitt Street, Ratner’s moved to 138 Delancey Street in 1918. Until 1975, Ratner’s was a 24-hour establishment and therefore part of the late-night city scene popular with Jewish performers, actors, musicians, and gangsters. Ratner’s remained in the Harmatz family until its closure in 2002.

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

The Centre Street Loop got its start in 1908 with the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company's first Manhattan subway track: the terminal at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. The Loop was the first of two BMT Brooklyn Loops designed to connect various Brooklyn Subway lines without requiring new and inefficient terminals in lower Manhattan. Under its original design, the Loop would connect the tracks of Broadway Elevated coming over the Williamsburg (now the BMT Jamaica Line) with Brooklyn Bridge trains originating in Brooklyn. The loop was never completed as planned and was instead incorporated into the BMT Nassau Street Line. These photos document the construction of the tracks that today carry the J and Z trains, and capture glimpses of Manhattan's Civic Center before the completion of the Municipal Building and other prominent structures around Foley Square and City Hall Park.

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.

This synagogue at 58-60 Rivington Street was designed by architect Emery Roth and was dedicated in August 1904. It was built in the Moorish Revival style for Roumanian Congregation Adath Jeshurun of Jassy Synagogue and financed by the Universal Building and Construction Company, which included some members of the nearby Eldridge Street Synagogue. Unfortunately, just two years after opening the congregation fell on hard times and they were forced to vacate the building. In 1908, the new Polish Orthodox congregation Erste Warshauer (First Warsaw) moved in. This congregation attracted some big names for their services, including George and Ira Gershwin, Senator Jacob Javits, Samuel Goldwyn and George Burns. Like so many other Lower East Side synagogues, it was abandoned in 1974. But that wasn’t the end of its life. Photographer Hale Gurland purchased the building in 1979, built a penthouse on the roof and turned the building into apartments for artists. The facade of the building has remained true to its historic life as a place of worship, except for one artistic detail - Gurland installed a stylized camera shutter where the historic rose window once was.

Norman Mailer in front of 90 Delancey Street, 1969. Writer and actor Norman Mailer ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic Party primary for Mayor of New York City in 1969. At the suggestion of Gloria Steinem and others, and with journalist Jimmy Breslin as an ally, running for City Council President, he campaigned largely on a platform of New York City secession. He advocated for the creation of a 51st state. His ideas for the city also included a monorail, a ban on private cars in Manhattan, and the self determination of individual neighborhoods to enact their own governance. Here he is on the Lower East Side speaking to the press. Mailer came in fourth in the primary with just 41,000 votes or just about 5 percent. Mayor John V. Lindsay was re-elected that November.

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.

Essex Street between Grand and Hester Streets, ca. 1978. Essex Street storefronts include an auto driving school advertising classes in three languages, Castillo Travel Agency, and Hebrew Religious Articles.

135 Essex Street, ca. 1978. Schmulka Bernstein’s, also known as Bernstein-on-Essex, was a kosher deli and Chinese restaurant that flourished in this spot for over three decades. Armed with the slogan, “where kashrut is king and quality reigns,” the eatery originally opened as a kosher delicatessen in 1957. Founded by Solomon Bernstein, the restaurant was a family-run operation that began introducing Cantonese-style dishes to the menu in 1959. Cooking with veal, beef, and chicken livers instead of pork, the Bernsteins infused the cuisine of two cultures in a way that had never been done before. As boasted on the restaurant’s menu, Schmulka Bernstein was the “originator” of kosher Chinese foods in New York City. The menu featured dishes like Lo Mein Bernstein, cooked with chicken livers, alongside Eastern European delicacies. Waiters also wore traditional tasseled Chinese caps instead of yarmulkes. In the early 1990s, the owners sold the family business. While it remained in operation for a number of years, like many other beloved Jewish delicatessens on the Lower East Side, Schmulka Bernstein’s eventually closed down. The original building has since been demolished and replaced with a luxury condominium development.

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.

80 Delancey Street, 1937. The street vendor here is sitting on the Allen Street median, directly across the street from the west facade of 80 Delancey Street. The plain flat brick facade remains the same, while the architecturally detailed south facade (not visible here) survives as well. The vendor is selling "Indian Nuts," which was the culturally inappropriate name for pinon, or pine nuts. These street nuts were not sold, shelled and roasted for $30 a pound such as they are today in Whole Foods, but in the shell in a wax or paper bag for 1 cent. A movie theatre staple as well as a street nut, they were once somewhat nostalgically described as, "those tiny nuts we bit open to get at a kernel that wasn't worth the work."

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.

My Archive Spring 2019 "My friend Ellen Retter is standing in front of Streit's grocery store on Rivington Street. I took this photo of her on December 19, 2013. Ellen was my dearest friend. I had been visiting her at her apartment on Grand Street, and we stopped to shop at Streit's before she walked me to the #21 bus stop on Houston Street. Ellen passed away suddenly on October 31, 2018. This is the only photo that I have of her, and I cherish it." —Phyllis Klein

194 East 2nd Street The pre-law tenements on lots 40-42 (or 194-198 2nd Street) were demolished between 1933 and 1940. The demolition of two of these buildings was completed by the Work Progress Administration (WPA), which was funded by the government following the Great Depression to give job opportunities to the unemployed.

Russ & Daughters, ca. 1980. Russ & Daughters is an ''appetizing'' store established on the Lower East Side in 1914. Appetizing stores are a New York phenomenon, a store that sold fish and dairy products, as opposed to a delicatessen, which sold pickled, cured, and smoked meats. These delineations in products observed the strict Jewish dietary laws. Opened as "Russ's Cut Rate Appetizers'' on Orchard Street , the shop was the first brick and mortar business for Polish immigrant Joel Russ. Russ had previously carried mushrooms on this shoulders to sell and later operated a pushcart. The shop expanded his offerings to include salt cured herring and salmon. In 1920, Russ moved his shop around the corner to 179 East Houston where it has remained for nearly 100 years. In 1933, Russ renamed the shop 'Russ & Daughters' (he and his wife had only three girls). The shop has been continuously run by four generations of Russ family members. Today the shop has an additional outpost on the LES and a cafe in the uptown Jewish Museum.

Anshe Chesed and Rodeph Sholom are respectively the oldest and second oldest surviving synagogue buildings in the city, and some of the oldest in the country. Both were constructed for German Jewish congregations in German architectural styles: Gothic Revival and Rundbogenstil (“round-arch style”), and feature red brick, central staircases and symmetrical façades with recessed central sections and square towers. Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue is the only Greek Synagogue in New York and the only synagogue of Romaniote Jews in the Western Hemisphere. The Eldridge Street Synagogue was America’s first major house of worship built by Eastern European Orthodox Jews. The yellow brick building features Moorish and Romanesque details and rich ornament. At its peak in the early 20th century, the synagogue hosted as many as 1,000 worshippers at services, but was forced to close in the mid-20th century when the area’s Jewish population began to dwindle. In 1986, the Eldridge Street Project funded a large-scale restoration of the building, which was repurposed as a museum. The Former Congregation Anshe Chesed, Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and the Former Eldridge Street Synagogue are all designated New York City Individual Landmarks.

“Congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagadol.” The Gothic Revival Norfolk Street Baptist Church, built 1850, was purchased in 1885 by the Orthodox Jewish Congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagodol. After over 120 years of continuous use, the synagogue closed in 2007, due to a dwindling congregation and deterioration of the structure. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999, but today remains abandoned.

100-110 Delancey Street, ca. 1978.

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.

Rivington Branch, date unknown. Designed by McKim, Mead & White and completed in 1905, the Rivington Branch still stands but is no longer occupied by the library. One of three Carnegie libraries completed by this firm in dense immigrant lower Manhattan neighborhoods, it was the first to have an open air space on the roof. The success of this feature led to the implementation in later branches. The original collection of 6500 books for the library was transferred from the adjacent University Settlement. Today the red brick and limestone building is occupied by a predominately Spanish language Evangelical religious organization.

A Gothic Revival synagogue at 172 Norfolk Street. Built in 1849 for Congregation Ansche Chesed, it was sold to Congregation Shaari Rachmim in 1873, to The First Hungarian Congregation Ohab Zedek in 1886, and to congregation Sheveth Achim Anshe Slonim in 1921, before its abandonment in 1974 and subsequent vandalization. In 1986, Jewish Spanish sculptor and painter Angel Orensanz purchased the property, restoring it and converting it to an art gallery and performance space. It was designated a New York City landmark in 1987.

13 Avenue A Building Date : 1838-39 Original Use : Residential Original Owner : Benjamin Winthrop Original Architect : Unknown Description & Building Alterations This is a three-story, three-bay-wide brick building with an iron and glass storefront and cast iron trim that has been painted blue, including lintels and sills on the third floor windows. The second story windows appear to have been replaced fairly recently, they are irregularly sized and have plain white frames. The roof is enclosed with a wood fence.

Shops on Orchard Street. During the 20th Century, Orchard Street became one of the Lower East Side’s primary shopping streets, particularly for discount clothing promoted by “callers,” merchants advertising their shops’ wares from the sidewalks.

304 Houston Street, 1935.

P.S. 20, Rivington Street, 1920. P.S. 20 opened in 1899 when the Lower East Side was a neighborhood of poor immigrant families living in crowded, dark and decaying tenements. In contrast, the public schools designed by C.B.J. Snyder offered a rigorous education in classrooms that maximized natural light, fresh air and ventilation. The fifth story of P.S. 20 contained a library, reading room, separate gyms for girls and boys and manual training rooms for carpentry, drafting and modeling. The rooftop playground offered a large space for a variety of open-air activities, far above the congested and dirty streets below. The red-brick school later became the Rivington House, a nursing home which provided hospice care to AIDS patients. The building was sold to a private developer in 2015, after deed restrictions were lifted, leading to public outcry and scrutiny of de Blasio administration practices.

New York City’s oldest extant building originally built as a synagogue is this Gothic Revival structure designed by architect Alexander Saeltzer. The synagogue was built in 1849 by Reformed Jewish Congregation Ansche Chesed (People of Kindness) which was made up primarily of German Jews, as well as Dutch Jews and Polish Jews. (This group generally emigrated to New York City a few decades earlier than the wave of Eastern European Jews who later populated the Lower East Side so densely.) It was the largest synagogue in the United States at the time and could hold up to 1,500 worshipers. Services were conducted primarily in German. Services were accompanied by musical instruments, including an organ that was added in 1869 at the same time as family pews were introduced, with men and women sitting together - evidence that the congregation was modernizing and Americanizing. In 1873, the congregation merged with another and the building was sold to Orthodox Congregation Shaari Rachmim. Shari Rachmim removed the organ and remained in the building until 1886. Then, First Hungarian Congregation Ohab Zedek occupied the building until 1921 and Congregation Anshe Slonim worshipped there from 1921 to 1974. Like so many others, the 1970s brought abandonment and decay to the historic building until it was rescued by artist Angel Orensanz in 1986. It was designated a historic landmark in 1987 and is now used as a well-known and beloved event space.

“East Houston St., Moving Picture Theatres.” The Academy Theater, with signs advertising “high class Broadway features.” In this photo, the theater appears abandoned; the sign to the left of its facade addresses anyone seeking “information regarding these 3 buildings,” presumably the theater and its neighbors. According to an apocryphal story, in 1921, an Academy porter confused a beam of light from a skylight opened to cool the auditorium for a flame and, allegedly, shouted “fire” in the crowded theater.

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.

Congregation Chasam Sopher is an Orthodox synagogue located at 10 Clinton Street on the Lower East Side. Formed in 1892 by the joining of two congregations of immigrants from Poland, it occupies a Romanesque Revival building constructed in 1853. It is among the oldest surving synagogue buildings in the United States, the second-oldest synagogue building in New York City, and the oldest still in use in the state.

78 East 1st Street | Block : 429 | Lot #64 Building Date : 1874 Original Use : Residential Original Owner : J. Lamour Original Architect : Unknown Description & Building Alterations This building was constructed in 1874. It is a five story brick dwelling with two store fronts that are occupied by restaurants. The original lintels are missing and the cornice is painted black

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.

East side of Norfolk Street, viewed from Essex Street, late 1960s. Beth Hamedrash Hagodol, at center left, was still holding services, though its attendance had begun to diminish. The synagogue was the only building on this block of Norfolk Street not razed for Seward Park Urban Renewal.

Stores on Rivington Street, 1978. Next door to the Porky Meat Mart, Catholic religious icons are visible inside 129 Rivington, while the storefront window captures a reflection of Schapiro’s Kosher Wines, across the street. The businesses along Rivington Street reflect the diversity of communities who made the Lower East Side their home: By the 1970s, the neighborhood was home to a growing population of Latin American immigrants, in addition to second and third generation Jewish Americans.

East Houston Street, west from First Avenue; June 23, 1929. The nearest building at left, on the south side of East Houston, is No. 161. Its neighbor to the east, No. 163-165, had recently been razed as part of the project to widen Allen Street in order to accommodate increased vehicular traffic. The widening project claimed dozens of tenement buildings, mostly on the east side of Allen Street. In the foreground is a pillar of the Second Avenue El trestle. At right, signs tout "AUCTION PRICES" for a "building coming down sale." The building, No. 1-3 First Avenue, was razed for another set of civic projects: the widening of Houston, and the Construction of the Houston—Essex segment of the new IND Sixth Avenue subway.

Essex Street Marke, December 8, 1941. The Essex Street Market began in 1940 as part of an effort by Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia to find a new place for street merchants to do business. At that time, pushcarts and vendors crowded city streets, particularly in the Lower East Side, making it hard for police and fire vehicles to easily pass. Flustered by congestion and unregulated activity, Mayor LaGuardia saw it fit to better organize the streets. He outlawed the practice, calling pushcart peddlers "a blemish on the face of the city," and financed the opening of the Essex Street Market. In a wider-effort to minimize overcrowding and improve public health and hygiene, he also developed various other indoor retail stores throughout Manhattan. The Essex Street Market closed in its original location on May 5, 2019. It will move into a new and larger home at the Essex Crossing development later in 2019.

Upon reaching New York, many Jewish immigrants settled on the Lower East Side, establishing new congregations and social aid societies specific to local communities of the old country. Small synagogues were so common that a stretch of East Broadway was known as “shtiebel row,” after the Yiddish term for a small space for prayer (in contrast to larger synagogues). Over time, Manhattan’s Jewish population shifted to other parts of the city, causing Lower East Side congregations to dwindle. Many synagogues were sold, shuttered, or abandoned, and some have since been demolished. Still, the neighborhood bears many traces of its once-vibrant Jewish life.

The building shown is the Loew's Delancey Theater, a motion-picture house. September 25, 1936 showings include “My American Wife,” a comedy starring Francis Lederer and Ann Sothern, and “Yours for the Asking,” with George Raft and Dolores Costello.

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.

Run on Adolf Mandel's Bank, February 16, 1912.

5 Avenue A Building Date : 1835-1836 Original Use : Residential/Commercial Original Owner : Charles Farington Original Architect : Unknown Description & Building Alterations This is a four-story, four bay brick tenement building with a restaurant/bar occupying the first floor originally built 1835-36. The south side features a contemporary mural, primarily blue, one story in height, that promotes the current tenant (Nice Guy Eddie’s). The storefront on the eastern (Avenue A) side consists of brown brick and glass. The lintels are cast iron and the cornice is a Neo-Grec styled metal cornice likely dating from an 1877 alteration.

Hebrew Religious Articles store, 45 Essex Street.

176 East 3rd Street, 1937.

Founded by Sam Schapiro in 1899, Schapiro’s Kosher Wines operated on Rivington Street until 2000. From 1899 to 1967 the grapes were pressed on-location in the block-long network of cellars below the street.

Norfolk Street Baptist Church ARCHITECT: Unknown DATE: 1850 STYLE: Gothic Revival Striking in profile, this smooth-faced stone Synagogue is an interesting example of modified Gothic Revival architecture. Raised on a platform of steps above the street, the recessed center section of the symmetrical facade is flanked by square towers pierced by coupled pointed arched windows that light the side vestibules. The dominant feature of this structure is the main, double entrance door with over-door panel joining it to the tall tripartite arched window, surmounted by a pedimented roof, affixed with the Star of David.

155 Rivington Street ca. 1915

Northeast corner of Norfolk and Grand Streets, October 12, 1931. The corner building, No. 372 Grand Street, and the adjoining three-story structures at Nos. 50 and 50½ Norfolk Street are flanked by the two grand entrances to the Manufacturers Trust Co. bank (formerly State Street bank).

75 Essex Street, 1928. Designed by the architects Rose & Stone, this Italianate-style building is the only one of its kind on the Lower East Side. When construction completed in 1890, the Eastern Dispensary relocated to the building from its previous headquarters on Grand Street. The dispensary was established in 1832 to provide the city's most vulnerable with medical care, during a massive cholera epidemic. Financed through private donations but with operations funded by the city, the facility offered more than just healthcare. It functioned as one of the city's "milk laboratories," providing sanitary milk for infants. Later renamed Good Samaritan Dispensary, the operation served the Lower East Side for over 60 years. When the dispensary closed in 1955, due to unpaid taxes, the Bell Yarn Shop moved in for a brief period in the 1960s. By 1985, the Eisner Brothers from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, purchased the building, opening a sportswear store on the ground floor. The future of this historic building has been the subject of debate since 2014, when the Landmarks Preservation Commission rejected a request for Landmark designation. The property, celebrated as a "testimony to social reformers in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries," has been pulled on and off the market since the LPC ruling. If the building is sold, it is the Eisners' stated priority to make sure that it is "left as is on the outside."

Readers of the Forward looked to the paper for important news. Here, a large group gathers at the corner of Essex and Delancey Streets to read the Forward’s reporting that the Second World War had ended.

As the center of New York’s Jewish immigrant communities, the Lower East Side was home to numerous Jewish-owned businesses, none more prominent than its many Kosher eateries, delicatessens, and grocers. Check out the handful of famous establishments that still serve food the old-fashioned way.

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.”

“Delancey St. - Williamsburg Bridge. \[Delancey Street Looking East from Near Ludlow St.]” Dated 1905, this photo shows the Delancey Street approach to the Williamsburg Bridge under construction. The carriageway, streetcar tracks, and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit subway tracks (also under construction) are visible at the foot of the bridge, though the span itself is barely visible through the East River haze.

University Settlement House, 184 Eldridge Street, ca. 1900. Stanton Coit and Charles Bunstein Stover established the University Settlement in 1886, in a tenement on Forsyth Street. Originally known as the Neighborhood Guild, since its founding, the institution has provided social services and education for the waves of immigrants who settled on the Lower East Side. President Franklin D. Roosevelt — who, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, spoke at the 1898 dedication of the Settlement's present Eldridge Street building — once described the University Settlement as "a landmark in the social history of the nation."

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.

A rendering of C.B.J. Snyder’s Public School 160 at the corner of Suffolk and Rivington Streets.

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.

Delancey Approach to the Williamsburg Bridge ca. 1919 Linking Manhattan and Brooklyn, the Williamsburg Bridge opened in 1903. The first person to cross it was Wally Owen in his fifty-six horsepower Speedster. Owen's round trip was clocked at six minutes and fifty seconds; several policemen wandering about on the bridge barely escaped injury. The bridge was dubbed the Jews' Highway by the press because it opened rural Williamsburg to Jewish immigrants seeking to escape the crowded Lower East Side.

Building at the intersection of East Houston Street, First Street, Avenue A, and Essex Street; April 3, 1935. The four-story tenement building appears in Manhattan insurance maps as early as 1859, and occupied a slender flatiron plot at the intersection of Houston and First Streets, roughly where the present-day median begins on the east side of the intersection. The building, usually numbered 2-4 Avenue A, survived the 1930s-era widening of Essex and Houston Streets to make room for the construction of the new IND Houston-Essex Line subway, which today carries the F train. It even has a brief filmic cameo in The Naked City, a beloved 1948 film noir set in and around the Lower East Side. The building was razed in 1955, when Houston Street was again widened in order to accommodate two-way traffic.

130 Orchard Street, D.A. Men's & Boys Clothing, ca. 1978.

Welcome to 155 Rivington Street. Before you climb the stairs, step back and take a look at its elegant facade. Think of all the people that have passed through this space over its 117-year history. From horse and buggies, through prohibition, and the great depression, this building has seen a lot.

Seward Park High School, 350 Grand Street, ca. 1972. Constructed in 1929, the building was built to house a high school whose origins dated back to 1905 and the opening of Public School 62. P.S. 62 was an intermediate school located at the intersection of Essex, Hester, and Norfolk Streets. Originally only seventh and eighth graders, in 1916 a ninth grade class was added it became the Seward Park Junior High School. In 1923 it was made an experimental school that was both an intermediate and high school. By the late 1920s the intermediate students had been transferred and the first school building was razed in the construction of the Sixth Avenue Subway. The new lot for the school, bound by Essex, Grand, Brooms and Ludlow Streets, had formerly housed a school, the Alimony Jail, a court house, and some tenements.

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.

Essex Street, west side, from Rivington to Houston Streets, March 13, 1932. In the center of the frame (mid block between Rivington and Stanton Streets) is no. 147. It is a simple five-story tenement building. In 1917 comic book creator Jack Kirby was born in an apartment in this building.

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

77-79 Delancey Street, ca. 1970. The newly chartered Bank of the United States was founded in 1914 by Joseph S. Marcus. The private bank prospered for a number of years in part because people believed its "high-titled" name indicated that it was run by the government. Many complained, particularly immigrants, that it deceived depositors into thinking it was even the central bank founded by Alexander Hamilton. Following the crash of 1929, the bank was among the first to fail. With 400,000 depositors at the time of its collapse, the New York Times declared the bank’s defeat to be the largest in history up until that point. Shortly thereafter, the building housed the Hebrew Publishing Company, one of the most famous publishers of Yiddish literature in the world. In 1976, the company relocated to a smaller office just a few blocks south on Grand Street. The building has since been converted into an office and apartment complex.

Orchard Street garment shops, ca. 1975.

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.

Public School 160, ca. 1920. Designed by C.B.J. Snyder in 1898, 107 Suffolk Street was home to P.S. 160 until its closure in 1976. The Dutch Neo-Gothic building was completed in 1898. Today the building houses the Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center whose mission is to nurture and develop Puerto Rican and Latino arts in the Lower East Side.

You submitted, and we rounded up our faves! Here are some spectacular shots of dads across NYC's five boroughs throughout the years. Happy Father’s Day!