50 Oldest Churches of NYC: Beth Hamidrash Hagodol Synagogue

Beth Hamidrash Hagodol Synagogue was the prototypical American synagogue for early immigrant Eastern European Jews, who began entering the United States in large numbers only in the 1870s. They found the synagogues of the German Jewish immigrants who preceded them to be unfamiliar, both religiously and culturally.

The congregation was founded in 1852 and they moved to various various buildings on the Lower East Side before finally settling into the location that would become their permanent home at 60 Norfolk Street. They purchased a Gothic Revival style building, which had once operated as a church for two different Christian denominations, in 1885 for $45,000.

Originally built in 1850 as the Norfolk Street Baptist Church, it was sold to a Methodist congregation in 1860.

This synagogue was a striking example of Gothic Revival architecture and once housed the oldest orthodox congregation of Russian Jews in the United States.  

Rabbi Jacob Joseph, the first and only Chief Rabbi of New York City, led the congregation from 1888 to 1902. Born in Kovno, Lithuania in 1848, he studied in the Volozhin yeshiva where he was known as “Rav Yaakov Charif” because of his sharp mind.

The Lower East Side and New York City preservation communities were desperately working to restore the building to its original splendor, but there was a fire there on Mother’s Day 2017, and the building had to be torn down due to instability.