Tenement Synagogue Ruin Glitters After $20 Million Restoration

Pigeons roosted near the 70-foot ceiling, the stained-glass windows were broken and the pews were thickly layered with dust.

“It was a wreck,” said Roberta Brandes Gratz of the Eldridge Street Synagogue when she saw it in 1982. “I walked in and said, ‘If we don’t save it, we’d have to reinvent it.’”