Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery

137 East Houston Street | Lower East Side | built 1900

Open on the map8 entries

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

1. 1910

   Yonah Schimmel's knishery settles into its East Houston Street storefront

   Yonah Schimmel, a rabbi from Romania who had hoped to teach, sold knishes from a pushcart before opening a shop on East Houston Street with his cousin. The knishery moved to its current site in 1910. Schimmel left the business early. Today it is the last knish bakery on the Lower East Side, and its storefront and signage have changed little over the decades.

   Source: Ephemeral New York

2. 1939

   Irish painter Harry Kernoff paints the knish bakery on a visit to New York

   Harry Kernoff, a Jewish-Irish painter, visited New York in 1939 and made a painting of Yonah Schimmel's knish bakery on East Houston Street. The shop has been a frequent subject for artists ever since.

   “Jewish-Irish painter Harry Kernoff painted this bakery on a trip to New York in 1939.”

   Source: Wikipedia

3. 1973

   Hedy Pagremanski paints Yonah Schimmel's beside an empty lot

   Ephemeral New York compares a photograph of Yonah Schimmel's from about 1940 with a painting made 33 years later, about 1973, and both show a storefront much like today's. Painter Hedy Pagremanski's view shows the shop's signage, a crowd of neighbors and curtains in tenement windows. An empty lot sits where another tenement once stood, a common sight on the Lower East Side in the 1970s.

   Source: Ephemeral New York

4. 1974

   October 3

   Arthur M. Berger, longtime proprietor of Yonah Schimmel's, dies at 69

   Arthur M. Berger, who ran Yonah Schimmel's Knishes Bakery, died at his home on Thursday, October 3, 1974, at the age of 69. The New York Times reported that he had succeeded his father as proprietor in 1924. Its obituary called the shop a Lower East Side landmark since 1910 and noted that the small store at 137 East Houston Street sold knishes, strudel, sandwiches and appetizers.

   Source: Internet Archive

5. 1995

   February 2

   FBI agents visit the knish bakery during a loan-sharking investigation

   At 7:30 on the morning of February 2, 1995, three FBI agents walked into the bakery as the manager, Alex Wolf, was making coffee. They went through business papers and took down a photograph of the owner, Sheldon Keitz, but left one of former governor Mario Cuomo. Officials said a ring charging interest of 120 percent or more a year had collected repayments at the shop; Keitz was among 15 people named, but he was abroad and not arrested that day.

   Source: Internet Archive

6. 2009

   Woody Allen's film Whatever Works takes Larry David's character for a knish

   In Woody Allen's 2009 film Whatever Works, the character played by Larry David takes his Southern girlfriend to Grant's Tomb and then out for a knish at Yonah Schimmel's. The New York Times counted the scene among the shop's appearances in fiction, film and fine art, alongside a painting in the Museum of the City of New York. The bakery sits at 137 East Houston Street.

   Source: Internet Archive

7. 2010

   January 13

   The Times marks the knishery's centennial with its owners, Alex Wolfson and Ellen Anistratov

   On January 13, 2010, Sam Roberts of the New York Times celebrated 100 years of Yonah Schimmel's. It was then run by Alex Wolfson, who came from Ukraine in 1979 and started at the shop as a busboy, and his daughter Ellen Anistratov, a fashion designer by training. She told Roberts that a real knish is round and baked, made with potato, and never square or fried. Roberts noted that the shop stood between a hotel and an art movie house.

   Source: Internet Archive

8. 2010

   The ground-floor shop in a five-story tenement keeps its tin roof and basement ovens

   The knishery occupies the ground floor of a five-story tenement. In 2010 the Times reported that its original tin roof was still in place, and that the handmade knishes were baked in basement ovens and sent up to the shop on an original dumbwaiter. The paper called the place a relic that had survived largely untouched while the neighborhood around it gentrified.

   Source: Internet Archive

Further reading

• Yonah Schimmel's Knish BakeryWikipedia
• It’s always 1910 at this East Houston Street knish shopEphemeral New York

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