Powers Street Mosque

104 Powers Street | also 108 Powers Street | East Williamsburg | built 1920

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1931
The American Mohammedan Society buys 104 Powers Street, a former Methodist church, for a mosque
In 1931 the American Mohammedan Society, which Lipka Tatar immigrants had formally organized in 1907, bought 104 Powers Street and two adjacent lots. It became the first corporate body in New York City to buy land expressly to practice Islam. The building had been constructed as the Powers Street Methodist Episcopal Church and had also served as a Democratic Party clubhouse and a greenhouse; the Tatars converted its altar into a minbar.
“…the American Mohammedan Society bought 104 Powers Street in 1931 along with two adjacent lots, the organization became the first corporate body to purchase land in New York City…”
Source: Wikipedia
1937
November 15
Time magazine features the Powers Street mosque in a story on Ramadan
Time magazine covered the mosque in a Ramadan feature in its November 15, 1937 issue. Two years earlier, an article in The Muslim World Journal had described 104 Powers Street as a three-story wooden building and the only real mosque then existing in America.
“Time Magazine wrote about the mosque in a feature on Ramadan in its November 15 issue in 1937…”
Source: Wikipedia

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