Stanton Street Shul

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Stanton Street Synagogue, also known as Stanton Street Shul and Congregation Bnai Jacob Anshei Brzezan, is a historic synagogue located at 180 Stanton Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. It was constructed in 1913 by a landsmanshaft from the town of Brzeżany in southeast Galicia. One of the few surviving tenement-style synagogues, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. That same year, the synagogue's congregants went to court over an attempt by its rabbi and board members to sell the aging structure to an organization run by a Jesuit priest. The resultant settlement and media attention led to a resurgence in interest in the synagogue. In 2012 its membership stands at about 100 congregants, representing a wide, intergenerational mix. The Stanton Street Synagogue was founded as a traditional, or Orthodox, house of worship and remains so until today.HistoryJewish immigrants from the Galician town of Brzeżany organized Congregation Bnai Jacob Anshei Brzezan as a mutual aid society in 1894. They built their synagogue on Stanton Street in 1913. The tenement-style synagogue incorporated two existing structures dating to the 1840s, a three-story wood-frame front house and a brick back house, at a cost of $10,000.