Central Synagogue

Central Synagogue is located on East 55th Street in Manhattan, in a building designed in a nineteenth-century “Moorish Revival” style by Jewish architect Henry Fernbach and completed in 1872. Architectural elements also invoke the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest. The congregation was originally made up primarily of Jews from Germany and Central Europe. In 1898, two congregations, originally based on the Lower East Side, merged: Ahavath Chesed (est. 1846) and Shaar Hashomayim (est. 1839). The congregation took the name Central Synagogue in 1918. The first rabbi of Shaar Hashomayim was the Reform thinker Max Lilienthal. A fire damaged the building in 1886, as did another in 1998, but in both cases the building was restored.