The interior of Congregation Tifereth Israel, built in 1911 in Corona, Queens. Enlarge this image. (Photo: Landmarks Preservation Commission)
The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission is expected to vote this afternoon to designate as a landmark what is believed to be the oldest structure in Queens built as a synagogue. Estée Lauder once worshiped there, and Madonna once lived at a former yeshiva nearby. The commission is also expected to vote to protect the historic Jamaica Savings Bank building, which the body has twice previously voted to designate as a landmark, only to be overturned by higher powers.
The synagogue, Congregation Tifereth Israel, at 109-18 54th Avenue in Corona, was built in 1911, when only 20,000 or so of New York’s 1.5 million Jews lived in Queens, according to a report by Kathryn E. Horak, a researcher at the commission. Designed by Crescent L. Varrone, the two-story, wood-frame synagogue combined Gothic and Moorish design with Judaic ornament: pointed-arched windows, a roundel with a Star of David in colored glass, and a gabled parapet. The original wood stoop and railing have been replaced with a brick porch with an iron railing, and the wood clapboard siding has been covered with stucco.
The congregation, established in 1906 or 1907, primarily served Jews who had moved to Queens from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and its design mimicked that of synagogues in the neighborhood, which had been shoehorned into narrow tenement lots, similar in scale and material to neighboring tenements and commercial buildings, and featured symmetrical tripartite facades, with a central entrance and corner towers. According to Ms. Horak, there were two Jewish neighborhoods in Corona in the early part of the 20th century: an older and poorer one along Corona Avenue, where Jews managed shirtwaist factories, and a newer and more prosperous one along Northern Boulevard.
Josephine Esther Mentzer, later known as Estée Lauder, the cosmetics pioneer who died in 2004 at age 97, was a member of Congregation Tifereth Israel as a young woman.
An affiliated yeshiva, on 53rd Avenue, closed in the 1970s and was converted into a residence and music studio; Madonna lived there from 1979 to 1980.
The synagogue continued to be used by a dwindling number of congregants until the 1990s, but fell into a state of disrepair, although a small community of Bukharan Jews from the former Soviet Union began meeting there in the mid-1990s. In 2002, the synagogue was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
