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19th STREET
In 1859 lots were acquired for a new house of worship on the north side of 19th Street, west from Fifth Avenue. They covered 70 by 90 feet on 19th Street and 27 feet 8 1/2 inches by 100 feet on Fifth Avenue. Still holding to the Sephardi custom of not placing a synagogue conspicuously on a main street, the congregation did not wish to build its synagogue on Fifth Avenue, and it soon sold the corner, stipulating that the purchaser would not erect on it stables or other nuisances. The laying of the cornerstone was set for Monday afternoon, July 11, 1859, at five o' clock. Advertisements of the ceremony were inserted "in such journals as thought proper." The order of the ceremony was drawn up by Hazzan Lyons. Asher Kursheedt, chairman of the building committee, was presented with the silver trowel that was used. Addresses were made by the congregation's preacher, Dr. Arnold Fischel, and the Reverend Samuel M. Issacs, the minister of the Congregation Bnai Jeshurun. Fifteen months later the building was completed in time for use on the High Holy Days. The ceremonies of consecration were set for Wednesday, September 12, 1860, a date which was characterized as commemorating the 206th anniversary of the arrival of the Founding Fathers of Shearith Israel on the island of Manhattan. The building is nearly square, and built in the Palladian style of architecture, in two orders- the Ionic and Corinthian, surmounted by a dome. The materials of the front are Dorchester or Nova Scotia stone, and, as seen from the street, it has that effect of grandeur which always accompanies the forms of classic art. The cornerstone for the new building carried history with it, for it was the selfsame cornerstone used more then a hundred years earlier for the first Mill Street Synagogue. It was relaid on October 3, 1833, the sixth day of the festival of Succoth. The main inscription stone of the second Mill Street Synagogue was set on the west outside wall of the basement. |
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