The Museum at Eldridge Street

Visiting the Museum at Eldridge Street (12 Eldridge Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side) is a glorious experience. The museum is stunningly beautiful, and I was in awe of the Eastern European Jewish immigrants who built it in 1887.

The synagogue eventually fell into disrepair, but was restored at a cost of $20,000,000, and it was worth every dime. Wow!

It’s worth the trip just to see the rose window that Kiki Smith created and installed (beginning in 2018) with the help of architect Deborah Gains.

The Museum is in the heart of Chinatown, also worth a trip downtown.

Here is a quote from the Museum’s website :

The Museum at Eldridge Street is housed in the historic Eldridge Street Synagogue. Built in 1887, it is an architectural marvel and a symbol of immigrant aspirations realized. The building is the first grand synagogue purpose-built by Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the United States, and was nearly lost to neglect before the Museum’s 20-year, $20 million restoration project returned the space to glory and public use.

Visitors are welcome to tour the National Historic Landmark and learn about its time as a cultural hotspot in the bustling Jewish Lower East Side, to its decades of decay, to its miraculous rebirth as a 21st-century Museum in present-day Chinatown.