MUSEUM AT ELDRIDGE STREET
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Mission Statement
The Museum at Eldridge Street's mission is to restore and preserve the National Historic Landmark 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue, and provide cultural and educational programs that serve a broad public. Located on New York's Lower East Side, historically an immigrant neighborhood, Eldridge Street's programs include K-12 activities, concerts, adult learning classes, neighborhood walking tours, docent-led building tours, "Preservation Detectives," a family program, historic building tours, exhibitions, and our annual "Egg Rolls, Egg Creams and Empanadas Festival." Programs are offered in-person and virtually. Visitorship exceeds 40,000 a year. Our programs focus on Jewish culture and traditions, Lower East Side immigrant history, and architectural and cultural preservation.
About This Cause
The Museum at Eldridge Street (formerly named the Eldridge Street Project, Inc.) is a non-sectarian, not-for-profit organization that began in 1986 with the primary purpose of preserving and restoring the National Historic Landmark 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue, now the Museum at Eldridge Street (“Museum”). Today, the Museum, chartered by the NYS Department of Education and Board of Regents, is a popular cultural and educational center, having served more than 400,000 visitors and participants since its founding. The Museum offers visitors historic building tours, exhibitions, Lower East Side neighborhood walking tours, concerts, festivals, adult education courses, K-12 workshops, lectures and film events, family programs, holiday programs, book launches and literary events, and myriad other events to serve a broad audience. These programs are offered virtually and in-person. The Museum at Eldridge Street’s mission is to restore and sustain the National Historic Landmark 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue, and to provide non-sectarian cultural and educational programs that explore American-Jewish history and culture; Lower East Side immigrant history; and architectural and cultural preservation. Through its public programs, the Museum highlights the value of historic preservation, the common experiences of America’s immigrants, and the significance of its inspiring site as a repository of American-Jewish memory and meaning. Concerts, lectures, readings, festivals, and site-specific art installations at the site draw inspiration from the building’s history and its unique qualities: 50-foot vaulted ceiling, ornate Moorish design details, stained glass in an array of pastel colors, and exquisite acoustics. Programs feature artists who emerge from traditions or work with themes pertinent to our space: memory, nostalgia, generational continuity, family and immigrant history, Lower East Side and New York City history, and the power and majesty of great places. As they explore these same subjects, our innovative K-12 and adult educational programs promote cultural and inter-group awareness. Our college internship program is a unique, hands-on model program, training dozens of interns each year in museum management, fundraising, cultural and educational program design, budgeting, festival planning, and evaluation. Our historic site is an irreplaceable landmark that embodies and evokes for those who visit the subtle, sometimes joyous, often painful, process of becoming American. These characteristics inspire our programming. Our immigrant history group tours and educational programs use the story of the building’s 19th century founders to highlight the challenges that all immigrants face when bringing traditions to a new place. Our architecture/preservation tour guide visitors in uncovering the building’s story through its paint patterns, stained glass windows, and Victorian lighting; visitors gain a basic architectural vocabulary and the tools to discover history wherever they look. During the Ways We Worship group educational tour, visitors learn about American-Jewish traditions and history. Also, we incorporate engaging interactive elements into our activities including but not limited a restoration-process exhibition using photographs, videos of the artisans discussing their preservation decisions and processes, and original artifacts; interactive touch-screen history kiosks that explore the social, political, and religious life of the turn-of-the-century Lower East Side and community practices; a family history center which includes collection artifacts and photographs, and hosts family research and oral history workshops; and building-wide ADA-compliant interpretative signage. For Jewish visitors, a trip to the Museum provides an enriching connection to their heritage. Nearly half of our visitors represent other ethnic and religious backgrounds. Many have never been inside a synagogue. In sum, the Museum’s programs reveal the synagogue’s continued relevance and importance as a vehicle for understanding contemporary immigration patterns, cultural diversity and inter-group understanding, built environments as symbols of community values, and the preservation of culture. To make reservations for a group tour, to rent our facility, to make a donation, or to see our calendar of current activities, please visit our website at www.eldridgestreet.org. We are located at 12 Eldridge Street, between Canal and Division Streets, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (NYC). The closest subways are the B/D train to Grand Street or the F train to East Broadway. Driving directions are located on our website at www.eldridgestreet.org, where you can also book tickets for cultural and educational programs.