Turn right at Hester Street to see more of the school complex. At #113 is the Hester Street Collaborative/Leroy Street Studio, encompassing art, activism, and more.
Turn left on Eldridge Street. This block is typical of the Lower East Side, full of businesses with Chinese, Spanish, and English signs, graffiti in various spots, and old buildings in varying degrees of upkeep. A plain building at #77 houses a Chinese church, but more interesting is #87: The circular multipart windows and the decorations above the top-floor windows are indicators, along with a few old signs in Hebrew, that this was a synagogue long ago. Years after the Jews left, it was a Christian church for a while. Then noted painter Milton Resnick moved in, renovated it, and used the building as his home and studio. The building now houses the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, an art gallery.
Continue on Eldridge across Grand Street. Make a short detour to the right on Broome Street to #280, Kehila Kedosha Janina. An active synagogue with a museum, this is the only Romaniote (Greek Jewish) congregation in the Americas. The quaint, narrow two-story building has lovely windows and blends Moorish elements with the Judaic.
Walk back to Eldridge Street and go right. At #133 is the Woodward Gallery, which houses modern art in a red-and-white tenement … that was originally a synagogue for Sephardic (Spanish–Portuguese) congregations. At 139 Eldridge is LMAK Projects, another modern-art gallery.
Turn right onto Delancey Street to see more galleries such as #55, Brennan & Griffin, and James Fuentes next door (and if they’re open, go in to visit).
Turn left on Allen Street, called Avenue of the Immigrants here. At 133 Allen stands the white-painted Church of Grace to Fujianese, which was originally a public bathhouse—used back when many local tenement buildings lacked their own showers or baths. (Look carefully at the sign to see PUBLIC BATH in faded letters.)
At Rivington Street, turn left. At #61 is the Lamb’s Nazarene Church, but years before this was the Rivington public library. Across the street, at #60, is a peculiar building: It once housed two synagogues, first Adath Yeshurun of Jassy and later Erste Warshawer, and it was designed by Emery Roth, best known for his iconic apartment buildings along Central Park West. It’s now owned by an artist who retained much of the Judaica outside but changed part of the Jewish star, removing a few metal bars of it so that it resembles a camera’s lens.You’ll notice by now that the Lower East Side is one of those split-personality places: working-class folk and their a-bit-grimy buildings and stores side by side with hipster specialty shops and eateries, art galleries, and fashion. The old and the new accept each other, at times grudgingly. With that in mind, reverse direction on Rivington.
Turn right on Orchard Street, long a haven for clothing bargains. Check out #140, The Orchard, an apartment building with its name emblazoned in golden paint. The walls of #130 are an advertisement for, and testament to, S. Beckenstein Inc. Woolens, Rayons, Silks, and Draperies. And a dangling street sign reminds everyone that on Sundays, Orchard Street is pedestrian-only for most of the day. (This was very exciting to me and my brother when we were kids and our parents brought us here—even if just to shop for clothes.)
Now make like the romcom, carefully crossing Delancey Street along Orchard Street to the Tenement Museum, which tells the story of immigration through the real-life experiences of people who settled in the neighborhood. Besides the main museum building, you can take a tour of 97 Orchard, a tenement that was home to immigrant families from many different ethnic groups. Some rooms are carefully designed to resemble the cramped, spartan accommodations these families lived in at the turn of the century. The fact that people could live so humbly yet make their mark and (mostly) thrive is a big part of the American story. Perhaps some of the local chichi galleries are owned or frequented by descendants of the old-timers.
Walk to 84 Orchard to see the gallery Artifact.
Make a left at Grand Street, taking note of Shin Gallery at #322.
Make a left at Ludlow Street. This whole block is taken up on the right by the Seward Park High School campus. This 1929 building stands on the site of the long-gone Ludlow Street Jail; the school itself had an earlier site as well. Today five smaller schools share the E-shaped campus.
Check out stores and buildings along Ludlow (including the slightly funky Esther apartment building at #126–128) until you reach Rivington Street; then make a right. This block has one of the best candy stores in Manhattan, Economy Candy at 108 Rivington. Forget restraint—go here for candies you rarely find elsewhere, cute T-shirts, and fun collectibles. Across the street is the high-rise, so-glassy Hotel on Rivington. How do they clean all the windows? Walk to Essex Street to see the large wall mural for Schapiro’s Wines, the last of the Lower East Side’s kosher wine companies.
Make a right on Essex and enter the Essex Street Market on your left. Roam. The building, which dates to 1940, was Mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s effort to get food carts off the streets to relieve congestion. In recent years this outpost has become a mix of ethnic food and supply shops (Latino mostly) and hipster food stalls (artisanal meats, cheeses, and more), as well as Cuchifritos Art Gallery and a barber.
Turn left on Delancey Street. On the left, at Norfolk Street, you can’t help but gawk at the shades-of-blue-glass high-rise known as Blue Condominium. Built in 2007, it has an unconventional sculptural shape that’s hard to describe—you just have to see it. A few blocks ahead in the distance is the Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn.
Go one block on Norfolk Street to your right. At the corner of Norfolk and Broome Street is a very old synagogue, Congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagadol. Built in 1850 as a Baptist church, this was the first Eastern European synagogue established in New York City. The congregation was led by Rabbi Jacob Joseph, the city’s chief rabbi—a post only he ever held—from 1888 to 1902 (this tour began at the playground named for his great-grandson). The building, beautiful but worn, sits unused as of this writing because of storm damage in 1997 and further storm-related damage in later years, as well as minor acts of vandalism. Its future is being debated as it grows more dilapidated. Very sad, but it deserves to be seen.
Walk back on Norfolk Street to Delancey Street, where you can get a train at the Essex Street subway station.
POINTS OF INTEREST
Captain Jacob Joseph Playground Henry Street at Rutgers Street
Straus Square nycgovparks.org/parks/straus-square, bounded by Canal Street, Rutgers Street, and East Broadway
Forward Building 175 E. Broadway
Seward Park nycgovparks.org/parks/seward-park, bounded by Canal Street, Essex Street, Jefferson Street, and East Broadway
Seward Park Library nypl.org/locations/seward-park, 192 E. Broadway, 212-477-6770
Sung Tak Buddhist Association (Congregation B’nai Israel Kalwarie) 13 Pike St., 212-513-0230
Eldridge Street Synagogue and Museum eldridgestreet.org, 12 Eldridge St., 212-219-0888
St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church stbarbaragoc.com, 27 Forsyth St., 212-226-0499
Hester Street Collaborative/Leroy Street Studio hesterstreet.org,