[2] The synagogue is located near downtown Statesville and the campus of Mitchell Community College.

Jews are documented as living in Statesville before the Civil War, but the number of families was small and they gathered for prayer in private homes until a formal congregation was organized in 1883.

[3] The brick, gable-end-to-the-street, Rundbogenstil building with its recessed, round-arch entrance and round-arch windows has suffered no major alterations in the century that it has served the Jewish community of Statesville.

[4][5] It is one of fewer than a hundred nineteenth-century synagogue buildings still standing in the United States.

[6] Media related to Congregation Emanuel (Statesville, North Carolina) at Wikimedia Commons