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A landmark synagogue in New York City undergoes a $10 million restoration designed to preserve its rich history.
On a recent night in New York City, where Chinatown meets the Lower East Side, the wailing sound of a Klezmer clarinetist echoes above the din of voices and traffic along the canyon-like streets of lower Manhattan. Almost lost amid the tenements and merchant signs in Chinese is the imposing neo-Moorish Eldridge Street Synagogue. Built in 1887 for the Orthodox Congregation Community of the People of Israel with the People of Lubz, it was the first synagogue built by Eastern European Jews in the United States.
After some rough decades that saw the rapid deterioration of the building's main sanctuary, the synagogue, which was designated a national historic landmark in 1996, is now undergoing an expansive $10 million renovation under the direction of a nonprofit organization known as the Eldridge Street Project. Though the synagogue still functions as a place of worship, the Project has also developed it as a non-sectarian performance space that hosts a wide array of cultural and artistic programming.
The synagogue's congregation maintains ownership of the building, while the Eldridge Street Project cohabits under a 99-year Letter of Agreement, allowing it to use the facility for non-conflicting cultural arts programming, in exchange for spearheading restoration efforts. It is an unusual marriage of sectarian and non-sectarian interests, but one that Judge Paul Bookson, president of the congregation, sees as harmonious and rooted in the common goal of restoring the structure and ensuring its continued use. Bookson sees arts programming as a logical progression in the long history of community service offered at the synagogue.
From the 1880s to the 1940s, the synagogue served the Lower East Side's flourishing Jewish community as an important social service provider, offering food and shelter, English and Hebrew classes, and physician references. But a period of decline began in the 195Os, when the area's Jewish population started migrating to more affluent areas of Manhattan and the outer boroughs, leaving an aging and dwindling membership overwhelmed by...