Ceiling Collapse Shuts Down Slope Synagogue
On Thursday night a section of ceiling collapsed inside Congregation Beth Elohim’s synagogue on Garfield Place and 8th Avenue, and the structural damage closed down the house of worship’s sanctuary for high holiday services this weekend. The congregation held most of its weekend services at the Old First Reformed Church on Carroll and 7th Avenue….
On Thursday night a section of ceiling collapsed inside Congregation Beth Elohim’s synagogue on Garfield Place and 8th Avenue, and the structural damage closed down the house of worship’s sanctuary for high holiday services this weekend. The congregation held most of its weekend services at the Old First Reformed Church on Carroll and 7th Avenue. The following email was sent out on Friday about the collapse: “Sometime last night, a large section of our Main Sanctuary’s balcony ceiling collapsed. The pieces of plaster are large and quite heavy. We are all so extremely lucky that no one was hurt. After House Committee Co-Chair Susan Doban called in a structural engineer for a full assessment and recommendations for next steps, we were advised that several other sections of the ceiling are compromised and that it is unsafe to sit in certain sections of the Sanctuary until repairs have been made.” A Daily News story on the collapse noted that after the holidays had passed, services at Beth Elohim would be held in the synagogue’s other two buildings on 8th Avenue. Beth Elohim’s website says its sanctuary was completed in 1909.
Old First Reformed Church to House Congregation Beth Elohim [NY Daily News]
Congregation Beth Elohim [Official Site] GMAP
You can say that again, Minard.
Emery Roth, architect of today’s co-op of the day, was a Jewish immigrant from Hungary who was denied admission to the AIA and wouldn’t be allowed to own or rent in several of the buildings he designed. (He ended up building his own pile on the West Side and moving into the penthouse.)
More recently, my parents, who were in the arts, were friends of Harry Belafonte. He couldn’t find an apartment for his family so he bought an entire pre-war building just so they could move in. Eventually, he sold off all the other units as co-ops, making a bundle.
Justice of a kind, I suppose.
My goodness if anyone has been involved in the real estate or architecture business in New York City for longer than ten minutes they know about which are the Jewish builings and which are the Gentile buildings and which are the buildings with the rich Catholic families etc etc. Same with private clubs. It’s not the sort of thing that is enforced by law, it is enforced by human mores, for better or worse.
Twenty years ago the racial boundaries in Brooklyn were as hard and fast of those in Johanesburg. Apartheid was not a state law but it may as well been.
Are you all that young?
fsrq, Minard is right, you know he’s right. I know people who go here, I know a wealthy congregation when I see one.
As I understand it, there’s still a co-op on the park that’s restricted to catholics.
fsrq, now you’re just being rude. congratulations. I hope it makes you feel superior.
I dont want to make more of this than it is (which to me appears to be another example of a poster here – writing things as facts that they have no f’ing clue as to whether what they post is actually true or not)
So I’ll leave it at this……
Please post, one cite, on link, one tidbit of verifiable data that supports your statement “This is one of the wealthiest congregations in the Boro.” (other than its location)
If you cannot – then I submit, I am correct, you are posting out of your a$$ – dont feel bad, it is typical
Interesting note on the congregation’s website: Park Slope was all but “impenetrable” to Jewish families in the mid-20th Century.
As late as the 70’s, acquaintances living on Prospect Park West bragged how their buildings were “restricted.”
Good grief!
Which is why Eastern Parkway is where middle- and upper-middle-class Jewish families lived and Turner Towers at 135 Eastern Parkway, according to a Jewish friend of my family’s, was built to be “better” than buildings on Prospect Park West.
These fine points of distinction still exist, at least in Manhattan, right down to the wings of the same building.
At 740 Park, the Park-Avenue side of the building has proportionately more Jewish owners than the rear-wing, where “old money” WASPS use a separate elevator core.
My own grandparents left Park Slope in the early 1930s because, as they put it, the neighborhood was “declining.” They lived a couple of blocks from the temple and its new community house.
I never correlated their decision with Beth Elohim’s arrival and expansion. But I have to wonder.
Are you kiding me? It costs a fortune to belong to this congregation. The temple is on 8th Avenue in the heart of Park Slope. You may not know what you’re talking about, but I certainly do.
“This is one of the wealthiest congregations in the Boro. I am surprised they didn’t catch the problem prior to the ceiling collapsing. That seems very very odd.”
Minard Lafever
Any you know this (the relative wealth of the congregation)
BTW not saying it is or isnt true, but you dint know it (nor do I) so rather then just posting stuff as fact at least qualify your statements