Left view shows the vacant building after I removed a few sculptures, right view shows the building after someone concrete blocked all the windows near the fire escape balconies!
Of course by then it was too late, the building had already been vandalised by others inside and then 17 year old me came along and finished the outside.
Three limestone keystones from 299 E. 3rd St., color photo of one and a black and white photo of all three together showing the subtle differences between each from the hand carving.
The reader may like to compare this with another building on E 9th st., also erected in 1898 and may have been designed by the same architect (George Pelham.) The brick design of alternating patterns of 7 courses of regular brick, and 2 courses of chipped textured face brick, the corbelled brick design on the upper floors, one floor of arch top windows and so forth are very similar.
Here is a photo of 299 E 3rd st taken by the NYC tax department between 1939 and 1941.
According to a subscriber on a Preservation list, he included the following information;
Oscar Israelowitz Synagogues of NYC (2000) indicates three synagogues
had existed in this location:
Anshei Dushikower Galicia, 291 E 3rd St
His synagogue necrology does not give dates. The Federal Writers Project records which indicated that the first two congregations were defunct in 1939.
The ground floor of 299 and of 301-303 to the right of it was altered later. Some changes included removal of 299's cast-iron newel posts,railings, steps, and paving over the light shaft to the basement. 301 and it's mirror sister 303 suffered a worse alteration; the columned porticos of 301 and 303 with their cornices and two small store-front windows on either side of them were totally torn out and replaced with brick. I don't remember the ground floor in 1977 enough to say if they combined the two small stores in each into one big one or if both ground floors were just bricked up and a modern entrance door put in.
It certainly is interesting to go back in time to see how the block looked when 299 was about 40 years old
The photo is courtesy of, copyrighted, and is being used here with permission of Kenneth Cobb, Director of the NYC Municipal Archives which owns all rights to the photo;
http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/doris/
The actual link to the tax photos information and order form is;
http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/doris/html/index.html#TaxPhotos
What a great resource, they photographed every building in the city!
I am making a model of the facade of this building in 1/12 scale either as a room box or a model which can be furnished with typical 1/12 scale dollhouse furniture.
A couple of close up photos of it's early development appear here; Facade
Parts Bricks, cornice bracket and window frame strips.
Last summer (2004) brickwork progressing, cornice almost done.
The interesting and unexpected thing was, when I received the photo in the mail and looked it over, there was a Synagogue to the left of the building (West) which I did not know existed. The Synagogue appears to be abandoned or vacant in the photo since it looks like some of the window panes are missing and broken in the central round window and the arch top window on the left, top floor. The photos I took of 299 in 1977 shows a similar height replacement building was erected.
Chevra B'nai Israel, 293 E 3rd St
Chevrah Bachurim Anshei Ungarn, 297 E 3rd St
The model has individual bricks, real wood windows and sculptured keystones etc.
&nobsp;
