Lower East Side Synagogue or Apartments?
By Margaret Foster | Online Only | Aug. 20, 2008
Two months ago, a developer requested a permit to demolish a slender, 22-foot-wide 1910 synagogue or shul on New York's Lower East Side. Now, after a press conference and several newspaper articles about the threatened structure, the developer has apparently backed off from plans to replace Congregation Mezritch Synagogue with a six-story apartment building with a ground-level synagogue.
New York-based Kushner Companies is "no longer affiliated with this project," said Howard J. Rubenstein, spokesman for Kushner Companies, in an e-mail. "They are assessing all options."
David Amirian, listed as the building's owner on a demolition permit application filed on June 18, says, "I have nothing to do with it anymore."
The application contains several inconsistencies, including invalid e-mail addresses and phone numbers.
"We're glad [Kushner is] saying they're not affiliated anymore, which hopefully means they're not going to demolish it, but we're not going to make any assumptions," says Kate Spalding, managing director of the East Village Community Commission. "We're not going to end the fight."
The commission wants the building landmarked to prevent its loss. Earlier this month, the group, along with the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, asked the Landmarks Preservation Commission to consider landmark designation for the synagogue.
In a 2006 survey of the East Village, the Landmarks Preservation Commission included Mezritch Synagogue as one of 136 potentially significant buildings in the area, according to Lisi de Bourbon, commission spokeswoman. "We've met with the synagogue leaders and others who are interested in the building to discuss next steps," she said in an e-mail. "We haven't ruled anything out at this point."
Named after a town in Poland, Congregation Mezritch Synagogue is the last neoclassical "tenement synagogue" on the Lower East Side. The neighborhood once had hundreds of these narrow shuls, each serving a different congregation from a separate, tenement-sized sanctuary.
"The fact that the Congregation Mezritch Synagogue has not only survived completely intact, but has also operated as a shul continuously since its formation, is both rare and remarkable," the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation noted in its Aug. 8 nomination.
Many preservation groups think the building can be renovated.
"We really believe that there can be a preservation solution that helps the congregation survive," says Frampton Tolbert, deputy director of the Historic Districts Council, based in Manhattan. "It's incredibly culturally and architecturally significant."
(In June, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named New York's Lower East Side one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.)
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Comments
Submitted by Randall at: August 22, 2008
There used to be one next door (North) to 299 East 3rd St that appears in a 1940's era tax photo. That synagogue appeared to have some broken glass windows and one missing, looked like it may have been vacant even then.