Historic Upper West Side Conservative Synagogue Going Condo

Congregation Shaare Zedek, an egalitarian Conservative congregation at 212 West 93rd Street in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, is planning to tear down their 93-year-old building, in order to keep the congregation alive. Back in October, Shaare Zedek President Michael Firestone told a community board 7 meeting that the congregation had already signed a contract with a developer, who will build a condo building in which Shaare Zedek will own three floors.

Apparently, Congregation Shaare Zedek just can't keep up with mounting costs. Firestone says the building is too big and expensive — with a capacity for 1,000 worshipers, the congregation only has about 80 families. In addition, they own and maintain the Shaare Zedek cemetery in Queens, to the tune of $80,000 a year. Firestone told News1 NY the sale would allow the congregation to fund its operations, including the cemetery, indefinitely.

"The synagogue will own the first three stories of the condominium, which will be a modern social hall, a modern sanctuary," Firestone said.

The move does not sit well with the old synagogue's neighbors, who hate losing this neighborhood fixture that's been there since 1923, and are worried about the environmental effect of the new condo building. Some of them have filed a Request for Evaluation (RFE) with the Landmark Preservation Commission, as an emergency measure to prevent the sale. But, so far, the city has no plans to landmark the building.

Former Shaare Zedek president Roz Paaswell told DNAinfo the building is not as important as the congregation. "In Judaism buildings aren’t so important, they are places that we use… but we move, we move a lot," she said.