When Jewish Baden-Ormond was still standing

At 59 Herman St., Anna and Kessel Bubes did not see a slum.

They saw the house where they had lived for most of their married life. They saw the place where their children had grown up, one becoming a designer for JCPenney, another working for the federal government, and two daughters remaining in Rochester. They saw memories of two children who had died.

The house held a small apartment for the couple and rental units that produced income. “I don’t owe a nickel,” Kessel Bubes told the Rochester Times-Union in January 1958. For the Bubeses, the house represented independence.

Bubes had come to the United States in 1902, after four years in the Russian army. His wife and their children followed. By 1904, they were in Rochester. Over decades, they lived on Harris, Morris, Vienna, and Chatham streets, later renamed Ormond. They ran a grocery store on Joseph Avenue for 30 years. They had known prosperity in the 1920s and loss in the 1930s. They had stayed.

One reason was their synagogue, Ahavas Achim Anshe Kipel Volin at 472 Ormond St. As Orthodox Jews, they walked to Shabbat and many holiday services. The synagogue needed to be close enough for them to reach on foot.

Around them, the neighborhood was changing. A 1959 story in the Times-Union estimated that 78 percent of Baden-Ormond residents were Black. Many families had come north from the American South after 1945 and settled in the same streets where earlier generations of immigrants had once begun their lives in Rochester.

But the older landscape had not disappeared—until the Baden-Ormond slum clearance project, an urban renewal plan supported by Rochester’s Jewish Community Council, along with the Federation of Churches, the Council of Social Agencies, and the local chapter of the NAACP.

The Baden-Ormond project displaced hundreds of families and businesses. It also identified nine synagogues within the area to be demolished. Among them were Kneses Israel at 34 Hanover St., Beth Hamedrash Hagodel at 32 Hanover, and Beth Hakneses Hachodesh at 408 Ormond. Others included the Coxey Shul, the Great Synagogue, and the Congregation of Friendly Brothers.

Many of these congregations were small. Most had been founded in the late 19th or early 20th century, as differences in national origin or ritual practice divided the city’s Orthodox Jewish population into distinct groups. By the 1950s, some of those divisions had begun to fade. Sons and daughters had moved away. Some congregations were expected to merge rather than rebuild.

In addition to the synagogues, the neighborhood contained other Jewish institutions. The Young Men’s Sfardim Association, a community center for Sephardic Jews, stood at 336 Cumberland Street. The Hebrew Shelter Home of Rochester operated in the area as well.

Jewish businesses remained visible. On Herman Street, Joseph Avenue, and Ormond, bakeries such as Gottfried’s and Stein’s continued to operate.

On Joseph Avenue, Zweigle’s sausage factory, founded by German immigrants, carried on a family business begun in 1880. Small industries also filled the neighborhood.

Baden-Ormond also held grocery stores, meat markets, tailors, doctors, and barbers. It held textile operations and ice cream plants. It held churches and storefront congregations. It held multiple languages and traditions.

In February 1960, the city of Rochester reported that 40 percent of residents within the Baden-Ormond clearance area had already moved out. Of 196 families assisted by the city’s relocation office,109 were living in rented quarters and 68 had purchased homes. Another 100 to 150 families had moved without assistance.

As buildings were vacated, some were burglarized. Hot water heaters were removed. In one case, an entire furnace was taken from a house that had been left empty.

In October 1959, five boys broke into the Congregation of Anshe Polen synagogue on Hanover Street. They later said they believed the building was a vacant house. Inside, they broke windows, smashed chandeliers, and tore prayer books. They took 70 cents from a locker.

The congregation still had 35 member families. Its Torah scrolls were removed from the ark by the vandals but not damaged. Soon afterward, when the congregation disbanded, they were donated to synagogues in Israel.

Other congregations tried to find ways forward. In 1958, members of Light of Israel began exploring a new site for their synagogue. In 1960, the members of Congregation Ahavas Achim agreed to sell their synagogue on Rhine Street to the city. The congregation had about 80 members and held daily services, though it had been without a rabbi since 1952. Its members merged with B’nai Israel on Joseph Avenue. Many of the synagogue’s sacred objects, including two Torahs and about 50 prayer books, were donated to the newly formed Temple Beth Am in Henrietta.

The city acquired synagogue buildings one by one. Most were later demolished.

By June 1959, Kessel and Anna Bubes had left the Baden-Ormond neighborhood and resettled at 24 Carthage Dr., where they marked their 67th wedding anniversary.

They had lived in Baden-Ormond for more than 50 years. The streets held their work, their losses, and their family history.

Until the city had decided the neighborhood would be cleared.

Austin Albanese is a Rochester-based writer and historian whose work focuses on local histories, civic memory, and interfaith life. 

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