With fewer than 50 members, the Lower East Side synagogue found it difficult to maintain the building. this month. (bridgeandtunnelclub.com)

When the roof of Manhattan's First Roumanian-American Synagogue, built in 1857, collapsed in January, its congregation and preservationists feared the worst. Those fears were realized this week, when demolition began on the brick building.

Because the roof had been leaking, the congregation had been meeting elsewhere for about seven weeks before the Jan. 23 collapse. The city's department of buildings approved the synagogue's demolition on Mar. 1.

Initially a church, the 2,000-seat building became a synagogue in the 19th century, and the present congregation has owned the structure since 1902. With only about 40 members today, however, the synagogue found it impossible to maintain the building, nicknamed "Cantor's Carnegie Hall" because of congregants like George Burns and choir members Jan Peerce and Red Buttons.

"America's older religious properties, like the First Roumanian-American Synagogue, are national treasures," says Wendy Nicholas, director of the National Trust's Northeast Office. In 2003, the National Trust named urban houses of worship to its list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

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