770 Eastern Parkway
Crown Heights | built 1920
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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.
- 1920
Edwin Kline designs a Collegiate Gothic Revival house on Eastern Parkway for use as a medical office
The house at 770 Eastern Parkway went up in 1920 to designs by Edwin Kline, in the Collegiate Gothic Revival style. Its first use was as a medical office. Chabad bought it twenty years later.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1940
Chabad buys the house as a home and synagogue for Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn
In 1940 Agudas Chasidei Chabad bought the building, with help from Jacob Rutstein and his son Nathan Rothstein, for the movement and for Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn on his arrival in the United States. Because he used a wheelchair, the building needed an elevator. He lived in a second-floor apartment while the building served as synagogue, yeshiva and offices.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1950
Menachem Mendel Schneerson leads the movement from his first-floor office after his father-in-law's death
Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn died in January 1950, and his son-in-law Menachem Mendel Schneerson carried on as leader from his own office on the main floor, while keeping his home on President Street. The older Rebbe's widow stayed on in the second-floor apartment. Since 1994, Schneerson's office has been used as an extra prayer room on Shabbat and holidays.
“…his son-in-law and successor, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, continued to use his own office on the main floor to lead the movement…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1960
The original synagogue is outgrown and expanded in stages, starting with an annex
As Lubavitch grew in America, the first synagogue could no longer hold the Hasidim and students who prayed and studied there. A first annex opened in 1960, with more expansions in the late 1960s and mid-1970s. The original room became a small study hall for rabbinical students, and in 1988 Schneerson laid the cornerstone for a further renovation.
“The first annex was added in 1960, with subsequent expansions taking place in the late 1960s and again in the mid-1970s.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1999
A continuous livestream of the main synagogue begins
Since 1999 the main synagogue at 770 has been broadcast online through 770live.com, except on Shabbat and holidays. The stream carries daily prayers, lessons, siyums and farbrengens, the gatherings where the Rebbe or senior Hasidim spoke on Torah observance and Hasidic thought.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2024
An unauthorized tunnel under the synagogue sets off clashes with police and nine arrests
In December 2023 an unauthorized tunnel was found linking the main synagogue to a nearby unused mikveh. When crews tried to fill it with concrete on January 8, 2024, Chabad messianists tried to block the work and clashed with the NYPD, which arrested nine people. The building was shut temporarily for a structural safety review, and footage of the tunnel and the fight spread widely online.
“The NYPD arrested nine people, and the building was temporarily closed pending a structural safety review.”
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- 770 Eastern ParkwayWikipedia
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