Beth Hamedrash Hagadol - Norfolk Street Building

Norfolk Street Building

The congregation's building at 60–64 Norfolk Street, between Grand Street and Broome Street on the Lower East Side, had originally been the Norfolk Street Baptist Church. Founded in 1841 when the Stanton Street Baptist Church congregation split, the members had first worshiped in an existing church building at Norfolk and Broome. In 1848 they officially incorporated and began construction of a new building, which was dedicated in January 1850.

Largely unchanged, the structure was designed in the Gothic Revival style by an unknown architect, with masonry-bearing walls with timber framing at the roof and floors, and brownstone foundation walls and exterior door and window trim. The front (west/Norfolk Street) facade is "stuccoed and scored to simulate smooth-faced ashlar", though the other elevations are faced in brick. Window tracery was all in wood. Much of the original work remains on the side elevations. Characteristically Gothic exterior features include "vertical proportions, pointed arched window openings with drip moldings, three bay facade with towers". Gothic interior features include "ribbed vaulting" and a "tall and lofty rectangular nave and apse." Originally the window over the main door was a circular rose window, and the two front towers had crenellations in tracery, instead of the present plain tops. The square windows below are original, but the former quatrefoil wooden tracery is gone in many cases. The bandcourse of quatrefoil originally extended across the center section of the facade.

Even as the building was under construction, the ethnic makeup of the church's neighborhood was rapidly changing; native-born Baptists were displaced by Irish and German immigrants. As members moved uptown, the congregation decided to follow and sold their building in 1860 to Alanson T. Biggs, a successful local merchant. The departing Baptist congregation founded the Fifth Avenue Baptist church, then founded the Park Avenue Church, and finally built the Riverside Church.

Biggs converted the church to one for Methodists, and in 1862, transferred ownership to the Alanson Methodist Episcopal Church. The Methodist congregation was successful for a time, with membership peaking at 572 members in 1873. It declined after that, and the church ran into financial difficulties. In 1878 the congregation transferred ownership to the New York City Church Extension and Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Founded in 1866, the Church Extension and Missionary Society's mission was "... to promote Churches, Missions, and Sunday-schools in the City of New York." It built or supported Methodist churches primarily in poor areas, or areas that were being developed, including one in the building that would later house the First Roumanian-American congregation. Soon after its purchase of the Norfolk Street building, the Church Extension and Missionary Society discovered that the neighborhood had become mostly Jewish and German. By 1884, it realized "the church was too big and costly to maintain", and put it up for sale.

In 1885 Beth Hamedrash Hagadol purchased the building for $45,000 (today $1.2 million), and made alterations and repairs at a cost of $10,000 (today $260,000), but made no external modifications by the re-opening. Alterations to the interior were generally made to adapt it to synagogue use. These included the additions of an Ark to hold the Torah scrolls (replacing the original pulpit), an "eternal light" in front of the ark, and a bimah (a central elevated platform where the Torah scrolls are read). At some time a women's gallery was added round three sides of the nave. Interior redecorations included sanctuary ceilings that were "painted a bright blue, studded with stars".

In addition to attracting new and wealthy members, the congregation intended the substantial building to garner prestige and respectability for the relatively new immigrant Jews from Eastern Europe, and to show that Jews on the Lower East Side could be just as "civilized" as the reform-minded Jews of uptown Manhattan. For this reason, a number of other Lower East Side congregations also purchased or built new buildings around this time. They also hired increasingly expensive cantors until, in 1886, Kahal Adath Jeshurun hired P. Minkowsy for the "then-staggering sum of five thousand dollars per annum" (today $129,000). Beth Hamedrash Hagadol responded by recruiting from Europe the famous and highly paid cantor Israel Michaelowsky (or Michalovsky). By 1888 Beth Hamedrash Hagodol's members included "several bankers, lawyers, importers and wholesale merchants, besides a fair sprinkling of the American element."

Though the building had undergone previous alterations—for example, the Church Extension and Missionary Society had "removed deteriorated parapets from the towers" in 1880—it did not undergo significant renovations until the early 1890s. That year the rose window on the front of the building was removed, "possibly because it had Christian motifs", and replaced with a large arched window, still in keeping with the Gothic style. The work was undertaken by the architectural firm of (Ernest) Schneider & (Henry) Herter, German immigrants who had worked on a number of other synagogues, including the Park East Synagogue. In 1893 they fixed "serious structural problems", the consequence of neglected maintenance. The work included "stabiliz the front steps, add brick buttresses to the sides of the church for lateral support, again in a Gothic style, and replac the original basement columns with six-inch cast iron columns." A later renovation replaced the wooden stairs from the main floor to the basement with iron ones.

Two Stars of David were added to the center of the facade. One is seen in the old photograph (above left), over a palmette ornament at the top of the window arch. The other, mounted above the top of the gable, remains visible in the modern photograph (top). The unusual cupola-like structure on legs seen above the gable in the old photograph, now gone, was also added by the synagogue, as was the square structure on which it sat. The panel with a large Hebrew inscription over the main doors was added in this period, before the older photograph. The decorations to the upper parts of the central section of the facade survived until at least 1974, as did the tracery to the square windows on the towers; this Gothic ornamentation was removed after it deteriorated.