Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: Delancey Street

Today the church at 126 Forsyth Street is known as the Templo Adventista del Septimo Dia (Seventh Day Adventist Church). But this wasn’t always the case. Look closely at the tan-and-red facade and you will notice evidence of the building’s Jewish past. Many Jewish stars are quite visible within the ornate window arches. Regardless of religious affiliation, however, this house of worship is an icon of Lower East Side history. The Romanesque Revival building was erected in 1890 by a renowned architect named Josiah Cleveland Cody, and was a temporary home to a missionary group attempting to proselytize among the Jewish people. Their efforts did not bear fruit and they soon sold the building to the Chevrah Poel Zedek Anschei Illia. The Chevrah was founded by a small group of immigrants from the shtetl of Illia, in the province of Vilna, Lithuania. These immigrants longed for a taste of home in the midst of a foreign land. They decided to form a fellowship in order to have a place to pray together and meet with their fellow countrymen, to help each other, and to hear news from the old home. For approximately the first ten years of its existence, the congregation had wandered from one small rented location to another on the Lower East Side. As time went on, some of the members became rich and more Americanized. They wanted to have a large synagogue of their own with a cantor, choir, and rabbi. A renovation in 1909 brought retail storefronts, and extra money to the congregation. But by the mid-1920s, the synagogue was in decline, thanks in part to "changes in the neighborhood." Nevertheless, the tight-knit community remained there until the 1960s when the building was finally sold. The new owners removed both the dome on the roof and the rose window above the main entrance – as attested by the photo below.

The Delancey Street subway station houses two large wall-sized pieces of artwork, one on each wall where the staircase exits and transfers are located. Both glass mosaics are the work of artist Ming Fay. The artwork on the downtown side is titled Shad Crossing and details two giant shad fish swimming, along with another wall mosaic of blue waters. In the late 19th century, shad were found along the Hudson River when new immigrants came to New York, many of whom settled on the Lower East Side. Ming Fay is a Shanghai-born and New York City-based sculptor and professor. His work focuses on the concept of the garden as a symbol of utopia and the relationship between man and nature. Drawing upon an extensive knowledge of plants both Eastern and Western, real and mythical, Fay creates his own calligraphic floating forest of reeds, branches and surreal species. Ming Fay was born in Shanghai in 1943 and raised in Hong Kong. His mother was an artist, and his father worked in the then-burgeoning Hong Kong movie industry as an art director. Both were students of Shanghai-based sculptor Zhang Chongren, who had studied Western sculpture in Europe. Ming came to the United States in 1961 to study at the Columbus College of Art and Design and later at the Kansas City Institute of Art. Subsequently, Fay earned a graduate degree in sculpture at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1975. He currently teaches sculpture at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey.