Beth Hamedrash Hagadol
- Architect
- Schneider & Herter
- Year
- 2017
- Style
- Gothic Revival
- City
- Manhattan, NY
Beth Hamedrash Hagadol was an Orthodox Jewish congregation on Norfolk Street on the Lower East Side, the first Eastern European congregation founded in New York City and the oldest Russian Jewish Orthodox congregation in the United States. Founded in 1852 by Rabbi Abraham Joseph Ash, it occupied a Gothic Revival building at 60-64 Norfolk Street built in 1850 as the Norfolk Street Baptist Church and purchased by the congregation in 1885.
the building
A repurposed church. The congregation's home was built in 1850 as the Norfolk Street Baptist Church, a Gothic Revival structure the congregation acquired in 1885 and made into one of the largest synagogues on the Lower East Side.
the style
The building is Gothic Revival, built originally in 1850 as a Baptist church before its 1885 conversion to synagogue use.
More on Gothic Revivalsignificance
The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The congregation, founded in 1852, split in 1859 to help form Kahal Adath Jeshurun, also known as the Eldridge Street Synagogue. Rabbi Jacob Joseph, the first and only Chief Rabbi of New York City, led it from 1888 to 1902, and Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, a Holocaust survivor and legal decisor, led it from 1952 to 2003.
nearby
- Church of Saint Mary
- Tenement Museum
- First Roumanian-American congregation
- S. Jarmulowsky Bank Building
- Angel Orensanz Center
- University Settlement Society of New York