Forward Building

Lower East Side

New York City

Art & Culture | History

An Early Skyscraper, the Center of Yiddish Newspaper Row,” and a Temple to Socialism

About Forward Building

& why it made the Carpe City list

Why are Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels gazing serenely above the entrance to a luxury condo building at 175 East Broadway? Because the Forward building was the first skyscraper on the Lower East Side, the center of “Yiddish Newspaper Row,” and a temple to the Socialist Movement!
Built in 1912, this beautiful Beaux-Arts building was originally the home of The Jewish Daily Forward newspaper.
The Forward was founded in 1897 as a Socialist daily to serve the growing working-class Jewish immigrant population that called the LES home.
The Forward was written in Yiddish and widely read. At its peak in the 1920s and early 1930s, it had a circulation of 275,000!
The building reflected the paper’s stature within the Jewish community. At 10 stories high, it was the first skyscraper on the Lower East Side, and it was said to tower over the neighborhood “like a colossus.”
Abraham Cahan, the editor of The Forward who commissioned the building, saw it as “the temple of freedom, equality and brotherhood…the temple of the workers.”
The paper wasn’t the only Socialist organization to use the building.
- The Forward hosted the first conference of the Workers Liberty Defense Union.
- The Workmen’s Circle, the 509 Local of the Butchers Union, the Jewish Socialist Verband and the Naturalization Aid League all kept offices in the building.
- The Sacco and Vanzetti Defense League used the Forward Building as its headquarters.
But it wasn’t all about politics – that would be boring. Cahan wanted The Forward to reflect all aspects of life on the Lower East Side. He published local news, short stories, and his famous advice column, where he answered reader’s queries on love, ethics and making it in America.
The Forward moved out of the building in 1974. That year, 175 East Broadway began a new life as the Ling Liang Church.
The building was landmarked in 1986, and after a failed attempt at condo-conversion in the 90s, a developer struck gold with luxury condos in 2006.
While the inside of the building is completely transformed, the outside looks just like it did in 1912, complete with its crowning clocktower, its Yiddish signage, and its contemplative Commies!

Carpe City Trivia

Did you know that The Forward used to publish a "Gallery of Missing Husbands"

The Forward was a community resource in every sense. Sometimes the struggles of poverty and life on the Lower East Side would prompt men to leave their families and try their luck as working single men. If this happened, jilted wives would report the situation to The Forward, and the newspaper would help track down the runaway husbands.

Why was The Forward known for its literary and artistic flair?

As a major daily, it attracted the talents of some of the greatest artists and writers in New York. For example, Isaac Bashevis Singer (who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978) wrote for The Forward, as did Elie Weisel, Art Spiegelman, and Leon Trotsky.