Built in 1857 as a German Evangelical Church and intended to serve as a staging ground for a mass planned conversion of immigrant Jews, this striking, red brick Romanesque house of worship has been reinvented again and again over its long lifetime--in 1864 as an Orthodox German-Jewish congregation, in 1890 as a Methodist mission, in 1902 as the Roumanian-American congregation that stands there today. The 2,000 seat temple is most well known as a world-class center of Jewish cantorial music -- it's sometimes called "the Cantor's Carnegie Hall" -- that has groomed at least two of its cantors (Jan Peerce and Richard Tucker) for blockbuster opera careers. Unfortunately, the roof of the structure collapsed and now the building has been completely dismantled and torn to the ground, except for an elegant doorway.