Congregation B'nai Israel Synagogue

Congregation Bnai Israel Synagogue
South elevation and partial west profile, 2008
Basic information
Location	Fleischmanns, New York, US
Geographic coordinates	42°9′19″N 74°31′59″W / 42.15528°N 74.53306°W / 42.15528; -74.53306
Affiliation	Conservative Judaism
Country	United States of America
Architectural description
General contractor	Crosby and Kelly
Groundbreaking	1920
Specifications
Direction of façade	South
Materials	Wood, stone
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Added to NRHP	November 21, 2002
NRHP Reference no.	02001396

Congregation Bnai Israel Synagogue is located on Wagner Avenue in Fleischmanns, New York, United States. It is a wooden building dating to the 1920s, built two years after local farmers founded the congregation.

Originally an Orthodox synagogue, it has since become Conservative. It is the only synagogue in the Catskills with an exposed truss roof. In 2002, the synagogue was added to the National Register of Historic Places, after a multi-year effort by Bernard Rosenberg, the descendant of a founding member. Congregation Bnai Israel Synagogue is the only synagogue in Delaware County to be listed.

The synagogue occupies a 120-by-192-foot (37 by 59 m) lot on the north side of Wagner Avenue, a side street that runs along the south side of the village, between Ellsworth Avenue and Park Road, southwest of downtown Fleischmanns. The neighborhood is largely residential, with many old boardinghouses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Behind the houses across the street the ground slopes up to the NY 28 state highway, rerouted there from the center of the village. To the west is the park created by Julius Fleischmann, son of Charles, after whom the village, originally called Griffin Corner, were renamed. Behind the synagogue, to its north, a small grove of trees surrounds the rear of the building, buffering it from the Bush Kill. As a consequence of being on the creek's flood plain, the synagogue's lot is flat and grassy, set off by ornamental hedges.

The building itself is a one-and-a-half-story three-by-five-bay frame structure on a concrete block foundation. It is sided in clapboard and topped by a gabled roof with overhanging eaves supported by brackets. Along the south (front) and side elevations the bays are divided by flat pilasters with Doric capitals supporting an architrave with wide frieze.