Shaari Zedek Synagogue

About this property

St. Leonard's Anglican Church, previously known as Shaari Zedek Synagogue and Congregation Achavat Achim, is a historic synagogue and church building in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Built in 1909–1910, the building served as a synagogue until 1944, when it was bought by an Afro-Caribbean church in the Anglican tradition. The building has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2009. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a substantial influx of Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Bedford-Stuyvesant. In 1902, new residents of Stuyvesant Heights who were members of Congregation Shaare Zedek of New York organized a new English-speaking synagogue by the same name. The synagogue was self-described as "conservative", blending Orthodoxy and Reform Judaism, with men and women sitting together and men wearing hats but prayer shawls being optional. Its first building was located on Quincy Street, but in 1909, the congregation commissioned Eugene Schoen to design a building at 767 Putnam Avenue. The new building was dedicated on September 25, 1910. However, Shaari Zedek's growth continued, becoming New York City's largest Conservative synagogue. In 1924, the synagogue left Putnam Avenue for a new and larger building at Kingston Avenue and Park Place in Brooklyn. The new facility—which Shaari Zedek occupied until 1969 and is now an Afro-Caribbean church—included space for Shabbat services, Sunday school, a dance hall and a gymnasium. President Calvin Coolidge participated in the dedication by pushing a button at the White House that caused the new building's electric lights to illuminate. In 1924, Shaari Zedek sold its building to an older Conservative Brooklyn synagogue named Achavat Achim, a branch of Brooklyn's first synagogue, Beth Elohim. Achavat Achim owned the building until 1944, when—amid demographic changes in Bedford-Stuyvesant that saw it become heavily African-American—it sold the building to an Afro-Caribbean church in the Anglican tradition named St. Leonard's. St. Leonard's was founded by a couple dozen Afro-Caribbean immigrants—primarily Barbadians but also Antiguans and Trinidadians—in Brooklyn in 1936. “St Leonard’s was formed mainly by Barbadians who were Anglicans but who weren’t welcome by the Episcopal Church. It was systemic racism at work," according to longtime St. Leonard's rector Trevor Bentley. The congregation eventually became part of the Afro-American Orthodox Church, not aligned with the Anglican Communion, under the leadership of Archbishop Donald M. Forster, who was a founding member of St. Leonard's and its rector from 1950 until his death in 1975.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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