East Side Hebrew Institute (left) and Church of St. Brigid (right), ca. 1975. Founded in 1910, the Institute was a Talmud Torah school (providing after-school and weekend classes) until mid-century when it added a day school. However, the blight and crime of the 1970s made the school’s Tompkins Square location untenable; the school moved to Irving Place in 1975, leaving the building abandoned.

Walking through the neighborhood now often referred to as NoLita (north of Little Italy), one can’t help but be struck by a four-story building on Mott Street which seems much more impressive than its modest height would imply. The stepped roof and carved foliate detail above and below the windows give the impression of a grand private residence, or at least the headquarters of some noble institution. But as most New Yorkers know, this is an old immigrant quarter, and the carving above the entrance which says “Fourteenth Ward Industrial School” gives away the building’s much less ostentatious origins. This story is adapted from a Village Preservation blog, which can be viewed here.

East Side Hebrew Institute ca. 1975 Now home to seven apartments, 295 East 8th Street a.k.a. 127 Avenue B, opened in 1887 as the Children’s Aid Society, Tompkins Square Lodging for Boys and Industrial School. Landmarked in 2000, 295 East 8th Street was “one of a series of buildings in which the Children’s Aid Society sheltered and educated destitute working children, particularly newsboys and bootblacks.” according to the designation report. Designed by Calvert Vaux of the architectural firm of Vaux and Redford, in the style of High Victorian Gothic, the building is the oldest remaining property built for the use of the Children’s Aid Society. It may be the oldest remaining boarding house designed by Vaux. The land acquisition and building construction was funded by a $50,000 donation by Mrs. Robert L. Stuart, (about $1 million today according to the Daytonion). From 1887 to 1910 the building served its original purpose which was not just to house, feed, and clothe the boys, but to reform them into successful members of society. In 1910 the building ceased operations as a boarding house and was a Children’s Aid Society school until 1925. In 1925 the building was purchased by the Darchei Noam Congregation, which used the space as a Jewish social service building and Yeshiva for almost the next 50 years. The building was left vacant in 1974 until it was purchased in 1977 and developed into apartments in 1978. It was renovated again in 2003. Matt Dillon allegedly lived at 295 East 8th Street in the mid 2000’s

On June 5th, 1870 Jacob Riis arrived in New York with 40$ and a revolver. Riis was one of the millions of immigrants arriving on the shores of the United States at the end of the 19th century. Seeking a better life, the immigrants were packed into the tenements and slums of New York. In the 1880s, the Lower East Side was the most densely populated place in the world. Riis's documentation of the inhabitants of these neighborhoods would make him famous and drive a reformist movement.

127 Avenue B ca. 1928 This building was erected in 1886 by the Children’s Aid Society as the Tompkins Square Lodging for Boys and Industrial School. It was designed by Calvert Vaux and George K. Radford as a combination home and school for poor boys, particularly newsboys and bootblacks. The Children’s Aid Society engaged Vaux and Radford to design about a dozen residences for needy children between 1879 and 1892; this is the third, in rust-colored brick with matching terra-cotta ornamentation, a varied roofline with dormers and chimneys, and a prominent corner tower — complementing the tower of St. Brigid’s Church across 8th Street. An article in Harper's from 1886 about the building describes its denizens: “the grimy little bootblacks and their rivals in trade, the newsboys.” The boys “can sleep in a common dormitory for a nickel a night. …The boy willing to cough up a dime can sleep like a little prince in his own bed.” The status of child laborers in America was a subject to which Harper’s would return in other articles. The Lodging for Boys, commonly called “the Newsboys Home,” had several lives before becoming a seven-unit apartment building. According to Roland Legiardi-Laura, one of the resident-owners of the building (which also has renters), in the 20th century a Jewish center called Talmud Torah Darchei Noam owned the building, then the East Side Hebrew Institute. In the late 1970s, Legiardi-Laura and others acquired the building and financed a series of renovations, from removing the light yellow and dark red paint that covered the building, to replacing the slate and copper roofing, to renovating the entryway in mahogany, to re-pointing the brick façade. Still ahead, they would like to restore to their original style all 65 window and door penetrations on the two facades; the perimeter metal fencing; and a side entry on the 8th Street alleyway. The owners welcomed designation as a New York City Landmark in 2000, and won a New York Landmarks Conservancy Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award in 2008. And the building continues to inspire pride and joy in its neighbors.