The Astoria Center was designed by architect Louis Allen Abramson as one of the earliest synagogues in Queens.

[2] Among the synagogue's features is a set of murals by French artist Louis Pierre Rigal, added a few years after the building was completed.

In 1921 that congregation built a Talmud Torah next to its first building, where education could "implant in our children a love and reverence for our noble tradition."

[3] In 1926, efforts were begun to enlarge the building that housed the new Astoria Center of Israel, and by 1929 ACI "had become a fully operational 'Center' of Jewish life in Queens."

[4] He had been drafted into the Russian Army during World War I, fled to the United States to enlist and serve with American forces in Europe, then returned to New York to attend rabbinical school and become a rabbi.