At the turn of the twentieth century, more than a thousand Jews, recently arrived from Europe, attended services here, an ornate, elaborately designed synagogue built as testimony to the permanence and security of that landfall. The eclectic facade, a beacon to earlier generations, combines Gothic Moorish and Romanesque elements. Built in 1887, when many of the Lower East Side's established congregations were converting the left-behind churches of earlier residents, the Eldridge Street Synagogue was immediately considered an opulent, elegant achievement of the first order. Today, the building still dominates the street, like a giant attending a knitting circle. In the eighties, the synagogue fell into relative disrepair, suffering neglect and water damage, and became a historical cause for New York's large Jewish community. The restoration is now nearly complete; and the synagogue, as a bonus, now houses a small museum tracing the history of Jewish life in the Americas.