Famous Ankles

From what I understand, this Temple is the premier Reform Jewish house of worship in NYC.  The building itself certainly is impressive.

It is just massive and impressive.  It does have a Wikipedia article that goes through the history of the Congregation:  it started in the Lower East Side and bounced around that area for decades until the 1920s when it moved to the Upper West East Side (it’s on Fifth Avenue and 65th Street, where I’ve recently found a bunch of interesting spots). [Corrected.  I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote the location.]

There’s a plaque that does provide some of the details of the building and its worshippers.  It states that the building is made of limestone and was built in 1929.  The designers based the building on a “Moorish-Romanesque” style to capture both the eastern and western cultures.  It notes that there are mosaics by Hildrevh Meiere in the sanctuary.

As always, I love a good doorway.

Wikipedia provided other items that I wasn’t aware of.  The site was where John Jacob Astor’s old mansion used to be.  In NYC, that’s class.  It also has seating for more people than St. Patricks Cathedral.  That’s big anywhere.

Here’s another shot of the Temple that indicates where those 2,500 congregants can fit.  This is from the 65th Street side.

-H

Thaddeus Kosciuszko (lots of spellings of his name as you might expect) was a Polish hero of the American Revolutionary War, and on East 65th Street there’s the site of a foundation named after him.  It’s a Polish-American group that primarily works to promote educational and artistic exchange between the US and Poland.  I’ve heard that they have a library or museum inside, but wasn’t able to find out when I went by there.

There are two plaques next to the door.  The first gives the briefest of histories of the Revolutionary War hero.

The fact that he oversaw the fortifications of West Point is a huge plus for the man as it was the bulwark against the British drive to break the revolution into isolated pockets.  The quote from Jefferson is about as fine a testament to a patriot as you can find.  It reads “He is as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known, and of that liberty which is to go to all, and not to the few and rich alone.”

The second plaque is simply a naming of the foundation and gives the goal of the foundation:  An American Center for Polish Culture.

I’ve actually had a “nodding acquaintance” with Koscuisko for a long, long time.  When I lived in Washington DC, I found that he was one of the five statues located in Lafayette Park.  He was the only one I wasn’t familiar with at the time and I went out of my way over the years to find out a little more about the man.

-H