The congregation's president and a small number of the members eventually formed the nucleus of Kahal Adath Jeshurun, also known as the Eldridge Street Synagogue.

[16] The congregation's building, a Gothic Revival structure built in 1850 as the Norfolk Street Baptist Church and purchased in 1885, was one of the largest synagogues on the Lower East Side.

[2][18] In December the leadership of the synagogue under Rabbi Mendel Greenbaum filed a “hardship application” with the Landmarks Preservation Commission seeking permission to demolish the building to make way for a new residential development.

[20] This application was withdrawn in March 2013, but the group Friends of the Lower East Side described Beth Hamedrash Hagodol's status as "demolition by neglect".

[28] The first Eastern European Orthodox rabbi to serve in the United States,[27] Ash "rejected the reformist tendencies of the German Jewish congregations" there.

[29] The synagogue, which had "a good Hebrew library",[13] was a place both of prayer and study,[33] included a rabbinic family court,[23] and, according to historian and long-time member Judah David Eisenstein, "rapidly became the most important center for Orthodox Jewish guidance in the country.

"[29] Synagogue dues were collected by the shamash (the equivalent of a sexton or beadle), who augmented his salary by working as a glazier and running a small food concession stand in the vestibule.

[34] Beth Hamedrash was the prototypical American synagogue for early immigrant Eastern European Jews, who began entering the United States in large numbers only in the 1870s.

[35][36] In 1859,[37] disagreement broke out between Ash and the synagogue's parnas (president) Joshua Rothstein[14] over who had been responsible for procuring the Allen Street location,[38] and escalated into a conflict "over the question of official authority and 'honor'".

[39] Members took sides in the dispute,[29] which led to synagogue disturbances, a contested election,[39] and eventually to Ash's taking Rothstein to a United States court to try to oust him as president of the congregation.

[41] Ash had only served as Beth Hamedrash Hagodol's rabbi intermittently during this time;[44] during the American Civil War he had briefly been a successful manufacturer of hoopskirts, before losing his money, and returning to the rabbinate.

[46] A number of New York City synagogues[47] formed the "United Hebrew Orthodox Congregations",[15] and agreed to select the Malbim (Meïr Leibush ben Jehiel Michel Weiser) for the role.

[7] Characteristically Gothic exterior features include "vertical proportions, pointed arched window openings with drip moldings, three bay facade with towers".

[51] Even as the building was under construction, the ethnic makeup of the church's neighborhood was rapidly changing; native-born Baptists were displaced by Irish and German immigrants.

[60] Beth Hamedrash Hagodol responded by recruiting from Europe the famous and highly paid cantor Israel Michaelowsky[59][61] (or Michalovsky).

[43] By 1888 Beth Hamedrash Hagodol's members included "several bankers, lawyers, importers and wholesale merchants, besides a fair sprinkling of the American element.

"[62] Though the building had undergone previous alterations—for example, the Church Extension and Missionary Society had "removed deteriorated parapets from the towers" in 1880—it did not undergo significant renovations until the early 1890s.

The decorations to the upper parts of the central section of the facade survived until at least 1974, as did the tracery to the square windows on the towers; this Gothic ornamentation was removed after it deteriorated.

Mendes felt that the money and energy would be better spent on supporting the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA), which he had co-founded with Sabato Morais in 1886.

[75] In the late 19th century, other synagogues in New York City often served a particular constituency, typically Jews from a single town in Russia, Poland, or Romania.

[84] His funeral was attended by up to 100,000 mourners, "clouded by the guilt-driven attempt of New York's Orthodox Jews to honor him for the last time, as partial compensation for the way they treated him during his life.

Jaffe, who was born near Vilna, had, like Joseph, studied at the Volozhin yeshiva, and had received his rabbinic ordination from Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin and Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor.

[100] Additional costs were incurred by work done on the building; two years earlier, architect George Dress had rearranged the toilet facilities, in 1934 architect Philip Bardes designed a small brick extension at the building's south-east corner,[63] and in the 1930s or 1940s the walls and four of the five spandrels in the sanctuary interior were painted with colorful "Eastern European-inspired" pictures and murals of Jerusalem and "Holy Land landscapes and Biblical scenes".

[102] Ephraim Oshry, noted Torah scholar and religious leader in the Kovno Ghetto, and one of the few European Jewish legal decisors to survive The Holocaust, became the synagogue's rabbi in 1952, a post he retained for over 50 years.

After the war he founded a yeshiva for Jewish orphans in Italy, and then another religious school in Montreal, before moving to New York to take up the position of rabbi at Beth Hamedrash Hagodol.

[2] While rabbi of Beth Hamedrash Hagodol, he founded another yeshiva in Monsey, New York, for gifted high school aged boys.

[18] The synagogue, "the home of the oldest Orthodox congregation continuously housed in a single location in New York" sat "padlocked and empty" with holes in the roof and plaster falling from the ceiling.

[20] Reportedly, the Lower East Side Conservancy was trying to raise an estimate $4.5 million for repairs, with the intent of turning the building into an educational center.

[21] In December 2012 the leadership of the synagogue under Greenbaum filed a “hardship application” with the Landmarks Preservation Commission seeking permission to demolish the building to make way for a new residential development.

Prior to the fire, Rabbi Mendel Greenbaum had been in discussion with groups such as the Chinese-American Planning Council and the Gotham Organization about selling the building's air rights in connection with the potential development of a neighboring parcel, to help pay for the possible renovation and preservation of the synagogue.