MBB Architects has completed the renovation and expansion of Park Avenue Synagogue’s 87th Street building.
The reconfigured and renovated building at 50 East 87th Street serves as the communal center of the Park Avenue Synagogue campus.
Facilities and amenities added in the 65,500 s/f property include community gathering areas, two new dedicated prayer spaces, and a glassed-in, double-height multipurpose room displaying modern stained-glass panels.
At its center, an intimate Minyan chapel enclosed in a sculptural enclosure invites worshippers to daily prayer.
Other new facilities include a pre-school, a new chapel and kiddush, a banquet space with catering kitchen, new offices and conference rooms for clergy and administration staff uses, adult education and meeting spaces, a teen lounge, music rehearsal areas and an outdoor play deck.
The completion of this major renovation follows on the heels of Park Avenue Synagogue’s opening of Eli M. Black Lifelong Learning Center, adapted from a nearby 1912 Neo-Renaissance landmarked townhouse and now serving as a flexible educational and multiuse facility.
At the Learning Center, MBB Architects collaborated with Chicago-based architect and Judaica designer Amy Reichert to incorporate themed artwork, Jewish texts and other liturgical installations into the 87th Street Synagogue building.
These include the reinstallation of a series of historic stained-glassed windows created in the 1950s by American artist Adolf Gottlieb.
