Located within the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue, the Museum at Eldridge Street presents the history & culture of the great wave of Jewish immigrants to the Lower East Side. Nearly lost over time, this landmark has been restored to its original grandeur.
The Museum at Eldridge Street, based in the 1887 National Historic Landmark Eldridge Street Synagogue, presents the culture, history and traditions of the great wave of Jewish immigrants to the Lower East Side drawing parallels with the diverse cultural communities that have settled in America. Tours, exhibits and public and educational programs tell the story of the generations that carried religious and communal customs to a new country and celebrate America’s broad cultural traditions.
The Museum at Eldridge Street has commissioned artist Kiki Smith and architect Deborah Gans to create a new monumental east window for the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue. The commission marks the final significant component of the Museum's 20-year restoration. The Museum will unveil the permanent stained-glass artwork in the last weeks of spring 2010.
A Limud (Learning) Center in the building’s lower level presents interactive exhibits on Lower East Side history and synagogue practice. These high-tech displays, created by Potion Design, received the American Association of Museum’s 2008 Gold MUSE award for interactive installations.
New exhibition and programming areas include the Gural-Rabinowitz Family History Center with resources for people to research their own family history and the Lise and Jeffrey Wilks Gallery in the historic women’s gallery with an exhibit on the Eldridge Street Synagogue restoration.
Located in a dynamic part of New York City, where Chinatown meets the old Jewish Lower East Side, the Museum pays tribute to the vibrant immigrant communities of its neighborhood and is a dazzling addition to New York City and the nation’s cultural, historic and architectural landscape.
The Museum at Eldridge Street is honored to share this landmark space with Congregation Kahal Adath Jeshurun, which has met continuously for Sabbath and holiday services since the building first opened more than a century ago.
“It was as though the synagogue was held up by strings from heaven,” said Roberta Brandes Gratz, founder of the Museum at Eldridge Street, of her first impression of the synagogue in the early 1980s. Pigeons roosted in the balconies, benches were covered with dust, and stained glass windows had warped with time. Early investigations showed that emergency stabilization was needed; if no work were done, the building would collapse. Public interest in the synagogue’s fate grew, and by 1986 the Eldridge Street Project (now the Museum at Eldridge Street) was formed.
The Museum at Eldridge Street conducted emergency repairs, and secured National Historic Landmark designation for the building. The Museum also gained recognition of the synagogue from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the City of New York – for its architectural beauty, its significance as part of the American immigrant experience, and its revitalization as a vital heritage center for people of all backgrounds.
In December 2007, the Museum at Eldridge Street completed the 20-year, $18.5 million restoration of the Eldridge Street Synagogue, an 1887 National Historic Landmark. The first great house of worship built in America by East European Jews, the Eldridge Street Synagogue is one of our nation’s most exquisite American-Jewish landmarks. Today it is the only remaining marker of the great wave of Jewish migration to the Lower East Side that is open to a broad public.
The Museum received nearly every major preservation honor, including the prestigious National Trust for Historic Preservation 2008 Preservation Award, for its restoration of the Eldridge Street Synagogue – conducted with a “combination of rigor and affection” in the words of architectural critic Paul Goldberger. Sixty-eight stained glass windows, 600 decorative glass “jewels,” 75 bulbs in the central chandelier, 64 Victorian-era fixtures, 190 benches were returned to their original grandeur by 200-plus artisans participating in this landmark restoration.
©2009, Museum at Eldridge Street Site Map