East of the Bowery

Alone, friendless and frightened, the old lady would not listen to reason. Only an operation could save her, the doctor had said, but she wanted no operation. Let her die. No, there was no family to call--no one at all, except "the Alliance." Willing to try anything, the doctor called the Educational Alliance on Jefferson Street in Manhattan's lower East Side.

Alliance Director A. Harold Murray hurried to the hospital. He spoke to the exasperated doctor, then to the bewildered old lady. What, she wanted to know, was this operation? Murray explained. Well, she said, if Mr. Murray said it was O.K., it was O.K. The Alliance was all the family she had. The doctor shook his head in wonder.

Peddlers & Patriarchs. East Siders would not have wondered. For nearly 60 years the Alliance has been more than a family to thousands who live south of Union Square between the East River and the Bowery. The squat, six-story building, once a skyscraper among tight-packed tenements, has been a bridge Between European ghettos and the bright promise of American citizenship.

Built in 1893 by men who knew the value of that citizenship--Isidor Straus (R. H. Macy & Co.), Jacob Schiff (Kuhn, Loeb & Co.), and other leaders of _New York's Jewish community--the Alliance filled a great gap in the lives of immigrants. There a man could come to learn English, use the library or the gymnasium, attend religious services or smoke a pipe with a Landsmann over a game of checkers. There mothers, still wearing sheitels, could learn the language that their children were picking up quickly in public school. And the kids themselves could come after school to work at their hobbies in Alliance playrooms, attend dances and do their homework.

Poverty hung heavily over the neighborhood in the Alliance's early days. Washing flapped in the breeze that blew between firetrap tenements. Men scrabbled for thin wages in the city's sweatshops. But at the Alliance, anything seemed possible. Even an art school flourished in its crowded classrooms. In 1915 Abbo Ostrowsky, an energetic young artist from Odessa, began the art instruction he continues today.

Austrian-born Chaim Gross came to Ostrowsky as a youngster two days out of Ellis Island, fed himself on the fruit the students were to draw as still life, and later developed into a world-famous sculptor. Such artists as William Auer-bach-Levy, Jo Davidson and Jacob Epstein paid 3-c- a week for instruction, used pushcart peddlers for models, or bearded patriarchs who posed for 15-c- an hour.

Young Eddie Cantor acted in Alliance-sponsored plays, Arthur Murray learned to dance there, and Morris Cohen discussed philosophy in the Comte Synthetic Circle. Radioman David Sarnoff and Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver got encouragement from sympathetic teachers.

Object Matrimony. The high tide of immigration ebbed with the passage of the Johnson Act in 1924, but the Alliance went on. Financed almost entirely by New York's Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, it now runs a pre-kindergarten and summer camps. During the school term, the settlement house is still the best place for the kids to spend their leisure time. So popular is the Alliance, even among East Side roughnecks, that a threat to cut off membership is usually enough to keep young toughs in line. Seldom does a teen-age gang need what Director Murray calls "psychiatric limitation" (a hasty phone call for the cops).

Today the oldsters are the newest problem. Many of their children have long since moved north of 14th Street. Once more the old people turn to the Alliance to fill their empty lives.

There is a summer camp for them too, and workshops where they can practice their old skills. There is a special club for those over 50, if they are widowed or still single. The club's main purpose is matrimony. At each meeting, successful former members address the group to urge old girls on, give them helpful hints on winning a man so that the club can meet its annual quota of marriages.

Last week the Educational Alliance celebrated the renovation of its building. With more than 6,poo members, the old settlement house is straining at the seams. New clubrooms have been burrowed under the sidewalk of East Broadway. Cots for the nursery are piled high in half a dozen classrooms. But the Alliance's purpose is the same as it was in the days of its first fund-raising fair: "The moral and intellectual improvement of the residents of the East Side of New York City."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.