The Old Streit’s Matzah Bakery – Rivington Street near Suffolk Street, Lower East Side, New York, New York

Matzah is the Hebrew word for the unleavened bread eaten by Jews during the springtime festival of Passover. Aron Streit, Inc. (sold under the brand name Streit's) is a kosher food company based in New York City. It is the only remaining family-owned and operated matzah company in the United States. The company was founded in 1916 by Aron Streit, a Jewish immigrant from Austria. Its first factory was on Pitt Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. There, Streit and his business associate Rabbi Weinberger made each piece of matzah by hand. In 1925, with the growing number of Jewish immigrants congregating in the Lower East Side, Streit, along with his two sons, moved his business to nearby Rivington Street. Soon thereafter, they bought the adjacent buildings where the company operated until April, 2015.

Streit’s 47,000-square-foot (4,400 m2) matzah factory, along with Katz’s Delicatessen and Yonah Schimmel’s Knish Bakery, was a surviving piece of the Lower East Side’s Jewish heritage. At the turn of the 20th century Jews, along with other European Immigrants, were crammed into the many unsanitary tenements of the Lower East Side. In 1915 they made up 60 percent of the Lower East Side population. Because of the large Jewish presence, Jewish-centric businesses like Streit’s opened and flourished. However, because of the poor living conditions, many Jewish families moved out of the tenements as soon as could afford to new areas of New York City, namely uptown and Brooklyn. Slowly Streit’s became a relic of the past.

Since the 1980s the Lower East Side has experienced hyper gentrification. The neighborhood is now a burgeoning area for glass luxury high rise buildings such as the Blue Condo and the Hotel on Rivington – a stark contrast to Streit's modest brick factory. Despite the changing neighborhood, the factory still tried to integrate itself with the community. It gave out fresh pieces of matzah to passing pedestrians. (I can vouch for this myself -- you've never tasted matzah until you've eaten it still warm from the oven!). At one time its adjacent shop even served as a community art gallery. The Streit family even considered opening a café or bar that served matzah, to go with the Lower East Side’s new nightlife scene.

In April 2015, they sold the building for a reported $25 millionand moved the operation to a location in New Jersey. It is worth noting that any employee who chose to make the move was guaranteed his or her old job in the new location.