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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.

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.

St. Brigid's Roman Catholic Church, viewed from Tompkins Square Park, ca. 1977. During the 1840s, a significant population of Irish immigrants settled in the Dry Dock District, in the present-day Alphabet City section of Manhattan's East Village. St. Brigid's was founded to serve this heavily Catholic community, with the cornerstone of the Patrick Keely-designed church laid in 1848. During the late 1980s, St. Brigid's became aligned with protestors and the neighborhood's homeless and disadvantaged residents, especially during the Tompkins Square park riots and relate police actions. By this time, the church's structure — built on piles in infilled marshland — had been deteriorating for some time (the church's twin steeples were dismantled in 1962, due to safety concerns). In 2001, longstanding structural concerns came to a head when the archdiocese ordered the church closed after engineers found it to be in imminent danger of collapse. In 2004, the parish was officially disbanded. In July 2006, demolition began abruptly, after unsuccessful efforts buy the Committee to Save St. Brigid's to forestall the wrecking ball. After immediate public outcry, the Manhattan Supreme Court temporarily stayed demolition, before permanently halting proceedings in August. Two years later, an anonymous gift of $20 million changed parish fortunes, funding a five year restoration project. Today, the renovated church is home to combined parishes of St. Brigid's and St. Emeric.

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.

New York City has the largest network of community gardens in the United States. Community gardens borrow from earlier urban-gardening movements, such as Frannie Griscolm Parsons' educational "Farm-Gardens" of the early 20th-century and Depression-era "subsistence gardens" which provided for communities across the city. Beginning in the 1960s, New Yorkers increasingly favored progressive government programs and looked towards the city to sponsor many past-due revitalization efforts for neighborhoods. One such effort was community gardens, which beautified abandoned lots and, most importantly, allowed the community to have an active say in the design of their urban environment.

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.

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.

93 Avenue D; 283 East 7th Street Building Date : 1903 Original Use : Residential/Commercial Original Owner : Samuel Greenstein Original Architect : Alfred E. Badh Description & Building Alterations This six story New Law tenement building was designed by Alfred E. Badh and was erected in 1902 to house 20 families for $45,000. The building is light brick with red brick detailing brick belt courses along the second story and windows feature pediment and broken pediment lintels, arches, and decorative keystones. Stores were located on the ground floor, which is still true today. The building was originally owned by Samuel Greenstein of 123 Orchard Street. Two earlier buildings were demolished to make way for this building.

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.

East Side Free Kitchen, undated (ca. 1935). Despite having all the trappings of a charitable organization, the East Side Free Kitchen was the subject of a 1943 indictment by the state attorney Nathaniel L. Goldstein described as “the opening gun in a drive against fake charities.” The indictment alleged that the organization collected unsaleable or spoiled food which it then “cooked into a hodge-podge of soup and served with bread to about fifteen people daily.” While the scope of charitable activities was limited, the free kitchen nonetheless collected “thousands of dollars” of donations annually.

636 East 6th Street | Block : 387 | Lot #127 Building Date : 1846 Original Use : Residential Original Owner : John Pheilan Original Architect : Unknown Description & Building Alterations No. 636 East 6th Street was erected in 1846 as a row house. It was altered for the United Brethren Mission of the Moravian Church in 1889 by architects Calvert Vaux and George K. Radford. In 1906, the building became a synagogue. On the 1853 map it is a brick dwelling. On the 1868 map, the house has been extended at the rear and it is labeled “Moravian Chapel,” and by 1893 it is labeled “P.E. Church.” The first architect associated with the building, in 1889, is George Kent Radford, who worked with Calvert Vaux on the building adjacent in the same year. Originally a Moravian Chapel, the building also served as a German Church and a synagogue at one time. A rose window was once above the door where there is now a cross in a recessed circle. There was also a cornice at the top of the building, similar in design to its neighbor at 638 East 6th Street. Based on alteration permits from 1909, it appears that the front of the building underwent significant changes. The bricks at the top of the facade are set at forty five degree angles, creating an interesting pattern and texture. Terra cotta tiles cover the window openings. The openings are capped by decorative brick work and are arched at the tops; the center opening features a pointed arch.

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

Church of the Most Holy Redeemer ca. 1935 In 1883 there was a fire at the school of the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer that led to the deaths of 16 children. The Roman Catholic Church of the Most Holy Redeemer at 173 East 3rd was built in 1851 -1852 by the Redemptorist Fathers. Today, the Church primarily serves a Spanish-speaking population, but like many other sites in the East Village, its history can be traced back to a time when the area was known as Kleindeustchland or Little Germany. With a tower that today reaches into the sky far beyond most of the structures of the East Village, it is hard to believe that Most Holy Redeemer’s original tower soared even higher, to more than 250 feet. Today the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer is a majestic limestone, high Romanesque style building although it was originally designed in the elaborate and highly ornamented baroque style and altered in 1913 by architect Paul Schultz. This remarkable Church was called out for its historic significance in a study of the East Village that was completed as part of the area’s rezoning. The school building, located directly behind the church on East 4th Street, is a four story brick building with a far humbler Romanesque façade. On the afternoon of February 20, 1883 a small fire broke out that led to the deaths of 16 schoolchildren and left 8 more injured. There were 900 children enrolled at the school and when smoke climbed into the second and third story classrooms a panic took hold. The children rushed into a staircase at the western end of the building to flee the fire. The rush of children into the narrow (3 feet wide) staircase became chaos which turned into tragedy when the railings (affixed to the walls only with nails) gave way and children fell from the stair to the floor below. As more children descended the stair pushing and crushing those ahead of them, more children fell off the stair into the pile of children reported to be four deep. An investigation of the fire and the cause of the children’s deaths led to a number of actions. The jury in a court case to determine if any parties – the school, the Bureau of Buildings or the Fire Department – had been negligent in any way found that no parties were negligent and recommended that fire drills should be practiced and that handrails be installed on both sides of the stairway. In his defense, Mr. Esterbrook, the Superintendent of the Bureau of Buildings claimed that it had, “neither men nor money enough to properly carry on (its) work” — a refrain we still often hear today. A month after the fire, the Bureau of Buildings did require changes to the school: the stairways were extended to all floors of the building and an escape ladder was added for access to the roof. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children took on an independent investigation of the fire safety of a number of schools in the city and found that 45 out of 66 were unsafe. They found schools with no fire escapes, locked or inward opening doors, shaky railings, and narrow stairs at schools citywide, including some in the surrounding neighborhood such as St. Brigid’s School (demolished) at 302 East 8th Street, the former St. Ann’s School at 113 East 11th Street, the Hebrew Free School at 624 5th Street (demolished) and St. Anthony’s School at 60 MacDougal Street in the GVSHP proposed South Village Historic District. While it took a great deal of time, the persistence of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, one of the earliest children’s advocates against child abuse and endangerment, led to changes in the fire safety measures at New York City schools.

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.

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.

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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!

This image was gifted to the National Art Gallery by Gary S. David.

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.”

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.

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.

Public School 36, 1920. Constructed in 1876 as Grammar School No. 36 and designed by David I. Stagg (whose career as a builder of schools lasted half a century), the school building on East 9th Street replaced a previous Board of Education school on the site (Ward School 21). The four-story structure with a five-story central entrance bay, Grammar School 36, later P.S. 36, remained in service to the neighborhood children until the 1970s. For three decades at the end of the 20th century it was the home of the Henry Street Settlement Day Care and Loisaida, a Latino neighborhood revitalization organization. In 2011 the former school underwent a massive interior and exterior renovation. The building had a a full fifth floor added on either side of the historic top floor bay. Today it functions as a residence for homeless young adults and youth that have aged out of the foster system, as well as a community center for the Loisaida organization.

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.

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.

304 Houston Street, 1935.

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.

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.

No. 206 East 7th Street, an Old Law Tenement, was constructed in 1900 and designed by architect Michael Bernstein, one year after its architecturally similar neighbor at 204 East 7th Street, by the same architect. Allen Ginsberg lived in the building from 1952 to 1953 after his institutionalization at Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute. Ginsberg befriended a fellow patient named Carl Solomon, nephew of A. A. Wyn of Ace Books. Solomon helped publish Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict, written by beat generation writer William S. Burroughs as a confessional novel. Ginsberg and Burroughs lived together on the third floor of this building, after Burroughs accidentally shot and killed his wife in Mexico and sought refuge. The six-story building is four bays wide and clad in buff brick. The windows at the first and fifth floors are arched with decorative keystones and the windows at the second floor have segmental arches also with decorative keystones. The windows at the third and fourth floors are capped by ornate lintels and the entire facade features recessed bands of contrasting red brick. The first floor is three bays with the entry at the center and all of the openings are arched. The metal cornice is intact and It originally housed twenty-four families with stores on the ground floor. The architectural features of the building’s upper stories remain intact, however, the above-ground basement appears to have undergone some changes since its construction. This image is from Village Preservation's East Village Building Blocks map. You can explore the map and more buildings in the East Village by clicking here.

Loew's Avenue B Theater Though many theatre magnates from the turn of the century are forgotten, one name from this era still associated with movie theaters today is Loew’s. Started by Marcus Loew, Loew’s Consolidated Enterprises, later Loew’s Inc., became one of the most prestigious theater chains. By 1913 Marcus Loew owned seventeen theaters in the New York City area and several others throughout the northeast. He built what he believed to be his most decadent theater on the corner of Avenue B and East 5th Street – the site of the tenement building in which he grew up. Designed in 1912 by Thomas W. Lamb, Loew’s Avenue B’s facade was clad in white terra cotta and featured over-sized arches and large windows. It was a gleaming contrast to the brick tenements that surrounded it and an impressive design that was meant to evoke an exotic palace. For the residents of the neighborhood, the building and the entertainment it provided must have been a welcome bit of frivolity. Lamb, who was a prolific theater architect, designed nine other theaters in 1912 alone. Over the course of his career he would design around fifty theaters in New York City and several hundred around the world. His theaters, like Loew’s Avenue B, were known for their bold designs in light colored terra cotta with bright punches and high-relief work. Some of his more famous works include the Regent Theater at W. 116th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, the Boston Opera House, Capital Theater at 1645 W. Broadway (demolished) and his themed theaters, like the United Palace at W. 175th and Broadway, which still stands today. Loew’s Avenue B, which had one screen and seating for approximately 1,750 people, slowly became outdated. As early as the mid-1920s it began to suffer and when it closed in 1958 it was showing movies that had already been out for some time. The building was demolished around 1968 and replaced with a nursing home.

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.

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.

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.

Virginia day Nursery ca. 1906 Founded in 1879, the Virginia Day Nursery cared for the children of working single mothers from the immigrant communities of the Lower East Side. This photograph was taken at the nursery's East 5th Street location, built in 1901. The Virginia Day Nursery remains active today at its East 10th Street location, with 67 children of lower-income working or student parents, and a therapeutic program for children with special needs.

638 East 6th Street Building Date : 1846 Original Use : Residential Original Owner : William Shay Original Architect : Unknown Description & Building Alterations This three story, three bay, masonry structure has a symmetrical facade clad in gray brick with red brick at the top floor set at a 45 degree angle creating an interesting pattern. The parapet is peaked at the center and has a bracketed cornice. The windows are double hung with small square panes around a large center pane. There is a large rose window at the third floor flanked by horseshoe arch windows and decorative egg and dart molding around each. At the center of the second floor is a double hung window capped by a Gothic arched window and also surrounded by egg and dart molding. The round arched entry surround has a replacement door but still maintains the egg and dart molding at the top. The 1853 map illustrates a brick dwelling at this location. By 1868 the structure is a two story store or warehouse and by 1893 it is a brick building with an iron front. The first record of this building comes from an alteration permit in 1869, indicating that the building was being used as an office. A decade later, the building was converted into a synagogue for the Congregation Ahawath Yeshurun Shara Torah. In 1900 in addition to other renovations, ritual baths were built in the basement. The building was used as a synagogue until the 1970’s when the 6th Street Block Association which would become the 6th Street Community Center began to use the building. Some architectural features pointing to its past have been retained, including a Hebrew Inscription over the entry door.

176 East 3rd Street, 1937.

155 Rivington Street ca. 1915

St. Brigid's Roman Catholic Church In the East Village, the Church of Saint Brigid-Saint Emeric was founded by Irish New Yorkers for an expanding Irish population. Originally known as St. Brigid’s, the church was built by notable Irish-American architect Patrick Keely, who designed and built almost 600 Catholic churches in the Eastern United States and Canada. Built on the corner of Avenue B and 8th Street, the cornerstone was laid in 1848 and was known as the “Irish Famine Church” as . As along the Hudson River in the West Village, commerce along the East River attracted many Irish immigrants. Along the East River, shipbuilding was the primary industry and the Church of St. Brigid’s was so named because Brigid was the patron saint of boatmen. Most recently, the church, in need of serious repair, was restored after a lengthy battle between the parishioners and the Diocese and an anonymous donation of 20 million dollars.

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.”

Loew's Avenue B Theater, ca. 1960. Loew's Avenue B Theatre was designed by famed theatre architect Thomas Lamb. Opened in 1912, the facade was clad in bright white terra cotta, eye catching among the dark brick of the nearby tenements. A single screen movie house that sat 1,750 patrons, the business began experiencing low attendance as early as the mid 1920s. The theatre closed in 1958 and the building was demolished in 1968, replaced with a nursing home.

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!

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.

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.

231 East 4th Street | Block : 400 | Lot #42 Building Date : c. 1850 Original Use : Residential/Commercial Original Owner : Unknown Original Architect : Unknown Description & Building Alterations This pre-law Italianate tenement was built, according to maps, c. 1850 as two connected buildings with apartments over stores. Additionally, there was a brewery in the back of the lot that was removed by the 1880s. The lot was once part of William B. Astor’s holdings and was leased out to various people between 1850-1875. In the mid-1930s the buildings were remodeled, and the projecting lintels and sills were shaved down and the ground-floor shops partially replaced with apartments. At some point, the facade was painted.

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

Hamilton Fish Park Gymnasium, June 29, 1938.

173 East 3rd Street Building Date : 1852/1913 alt. Original Use : Institutional Original Owner : Catholic Diocese of New York Original Architect : Mr. (Johannas) Walsh, alterations by Paul Schultz Description & Building Alterations This lot is a conglomeration of several old lots that contain the Roman Catholic Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, the rectory, a former Catholic school for girls, a playground and former convent. The church was founded by Redemptorist Fathers and the complex was built in 1852 for the large German immigrant population. When the church was built, its steeple was much taller, only slightly shorter than St. Patrick’s Cathedral even though it predated that building. Archbishop John Hughes and Bishop John Neumann, the only male American citizen canonized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, were present at the dedication. The architect, according to From Abyssinian to Zion: A Guide to Manhattan’s Houses of Worship by David Dunlap was Mr. Walsh. This could have been Johannas Walsh, who was the only architect with the last name ‘Walsh’ in the NYC Directory from 1851-52. Although somewhat eclectic, the overall design of the church is in a mix of the Baroque Romanesque and Byzantine Revival styles. It originally had a 250-foot tower. The building’s ornate facade often led to it being mistaken for a cathedral rather than a parish church. The original 1852 church facade was heavily remodeled in 1913 by Paul Schultz. This work eliminated ornamentation, reduced the Baroque curves, and shortened the steeple. At this same time, a rectory and school were also altered. Due to the size and complexity of alterations done on this complex, it is difficult to give a comprehensive overview.