Kane Street Synagogue

This photo of the week shows the sanctuary interior of Kane Street Synagogue in Cobble Hill in 1934. The building was constructed in 1855 as a Middle Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in the Norman style of Romanesque architecture and was subsequently owned by the Trinity German Lutheran Church. Congregation Baith Israel purchased the building in 1905 when they moved from their Boerum Hill Synagogue (Congregations Baith Israel and Anshei Emes merged in 1908 to become Baith Israel Anshei Emes). In this photograph, you can see some of the stained glass windows, which were installed in 1917. In the 1930s, the walls were painted with a trompe l'oeil effect to look like limestone. This was lost when the walls were repainted in the 1980s.

Want to add an audio component to this photo of the week? Listen to former president, historian, and archivist Judith Greenwald's 3-part oral history in which she discusses the history of the building and Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes (BIAE). 

This photo was donated for capture by Judith R. Greenwald and digitized as a part of the Brooklyn Jewish History Project, a community scanning and oral history repository, to document the history, lives and experiences of Jewish people in Brooklyn. To see more images, ephemera and objects from this project, visit the Brooklyn Jewish History Project collection on our digital collections portal. This project is funded by the David Berg Foundation.

Interested in seeing more photos from CBH’s collections? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal at Brooklyn Public Library. We look forward to inviting you to CBH in the future to research in our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. In the meantime, please visit our resources page to search our collections. Questions? Our reference staff is available to help with your research! You can reach us at [email protected].