Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York

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The Hebrew Orphan Asylum was a Jewish orphanage in New York City. It was founded in 1860 by the Hebrew Benevolent Society. It was closed in 1941, after it was decided that children thrive better in foster care or small group homes, rather than in large institutions.

Its successor organization is the Jewish Child Care Association.

History

In 1822, the Hebrew Benevolent Society was established by Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews to take care of Jewish orphans .[1]. Conflicts between the two groups, however, delayed the creation of an orphanage for nearly forty years. In 1858, the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara in the Papal States galvanized the group to establish an orphanage. A dinner was held in December 1858 and had raised $10,000 for this purpose, until a conflict between Reformed and Orthodox Jews over the wearing of yarmulkes caused a "Tammany-style brawl." Fortunately, gentiles who were attending the dinner, including Mayor Daniel Tiemann, intervened and broke up the fight.[2]

The practice of holding annual dinners then ceased, but the Hebrew Benevolent Society did establish an orphanage, which opened in a rented townhouse on Lamartine Place in Chelsea in 1860 with several dozen boys and girls.[3] On each holiday the children were taken to a different synagogue, to placate the different brands of Judaism of the sponsoring organizations.[4] During the Draft Riots, the mobs came to the very street where the orphanage was, but did not attack it,[5] unlike the Colored Children's Orphan Asylum. In 1863 the orphanage moved to a purpose-built home on east 77th Street near Third Avenue.[6] In the orphanage, girls taught were domestic skills, while the boys were taught shoemaking and printing; the orphanage's printshop produced a magazine, Young Israel, to which Horatio Alger supplied a serial novel.[7]

Between 1860 and 1919 13,500 children were admitted to the home. Few children, however, were adopted, since most were actually half-orphans, members of a family which one parent (usually the father) had deserted and which the surviving parent could not support.[8]

In 1882 the Hebrew Benevolent Society constructed a large building at Amsterdam Avenue, between 136th and 138th Streets, in the Modern Renaissance style. The building cost $750,000 (including the land), and $60,000 a year to operate. The building housed one thousand children. It had its own water filtration system, installed after a dysentery outbreak in 1898 that left seven children dead was caused by impurities in the city's water supply. It was self-sufficient enough that it was able to survive for a week on its own after it was cut off during the Blizzard of 1888. During the influenza epidemic of 1918, not a single child in the orphanage died.[9]

By 1920 the orphanage was losing its position to the Pleasantville Cottage School, which, unlike the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, was not a large institutional building but a series of cottages in a rural area. The Hebrew Orphan Asylum decided to rebuild on the cottage system on land that it owned in the Bronx; it would raise money to do this by selling the orphanage to the Yankees, who wanted land to build a rival stadium to the Polo Grounds. This deal fell through, the Yankees instead built a stadium in the Bronx, and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum was finally closed in 1941.[10]

Notable Alumni

References

  1. ^ Kim van Alkmade, "Orphans Together: A History of New York's Hebrew Orphan Asylum,"p. 1.
  2. ^ Kim van Alkmade, "Orphans Together: A History of New York's Hebrew Orphan Asylum,"p. 1.
  3. ^ Kim van Alkmade, "Orphans Together: A History of New York's Hebrew Orphan Asylum,"p. 1.
  4. ^ Kim van Alkmade, "Orphans Together: A History of New York's Hebrew Orphan Asylum,"p. 1.
  5. ^ Kim van Alkmade, "Orphans Together: A History of New York's Hebrew Orphan Asylum,"p. 1.
  6. ^ Kim van Alkmade, "Orphans Together: A History of New York's Hebrew Orphan Asylum,"p. 1.
  7. ^ Kim van Alkmade, "Orphans Together: A History of New York's Hebrew Orphan Asylum,"p. 1.
  8. ^ Kim van Alkmade, "Orphans Together: A History of New York's Hebrew Orphan Asylum,"p. 1.
  9. ^ Kim van Alkmade, "Orphans Together: A History of New York's Hebrew Orphan Asylum,"p. 1.
  10. ^ Kim van Alkmade, "Orphans Together: A History of New York's Hebrew Orphan Asylum,"p. 1.

Bibliography

Hyman Bogen, The Luckiest Orphans: A History of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992).

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