But in the early 20th century, B’nai Israel was one of more than 16 synagogues within walking distance of the Joseph Avenue neighborhood. Congregations then consisted of up to 800 people, with schools and community centers throughout the area.

B’nai Israel was built in 1928 to serve a burgeoning Jewish community that first formed in the 1850s, when Jewish immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe began settling in Rochester’s northeast quadrant. Joseph Avenue, at the time, had become a thriving corridor from the industrial revolution with many neighborhood residents working in the textile or wheat industries.

With its fish markets, clothing stores and other businesses, Joseph Avenue at the turn of the 20th century was known as the city street where you could buy almost anything. The neighborhood continued to thrive until the 1950s when investment in the area began to wane. Families had begun moving out of crowded city neighborhoods for larger houses in the suburbs. That migration would leave space for the growing civil unrest that eventually led to the 1964 Rochester riots, which began near Joseph Avenue.

B’nai Israel, by contrast, was thriving in the 1960s. A congregation from Ormond Street at Ahavas Achim merged with it to form B’nai Israel Ahavas Achim, making it the center of Jewish social life.