The former synagogue was designed by architect Emery Roth, and completed in 1904 in the Moorish Revival style.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Lower East Side became a refuge for hundreds of thousands of Jews who fled the pogroms, persecutions and economic distress of Eastern Europe.

[4][dead link‍] However, a legal battle between the Romanian Jews and the developer lasted until 1910, when the New York State Supreme Court dismissed on appeal a claim that the Romanian congregation had an oral contract with the construction company and that it could buy back the building.

Hundreds of Polish immigrants would gather at the Warschuer synagogue, where services were conducted in Hebrew and Yiddish.

The 1975 death of pioneering Rabbi Nuta Shainberg, a Holocaust survivor who had been the congregation's leader for nearly three decades, was a significant turning point.