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Not quite sure what's going on here. Bec called to say the synagogue across the street was being torn down (Rivingington, Lower East Side). Apparently the roof collapsed in on itself and so the damaged structures had to be removed asap. That's the only sense I can make of the altar pieces still sitting there. "89-93: This 2,000-seat sanctuary was originally built around 1857 as the German Evangelical Church, designed to convert Jews, it was bought in 1864 by Shaaray Hashomayim, New York's oldest Orthodox German-Jewish congregation. It reverted to a church in 1890, when a Methodist mission society moved the Allen Street Memorial Church here. Finally the current congregation bought it in 1902, and it's been a synagogue ever since, though no longer primarily Romanian. "The building is noted for its acoustics, earning it the nickname "the Cantor's Carnegie Hall." Opera stars Jan Peerce (Jacob Perelmuth) and Richard Tucker (Reuben Ticker) did some of their earliest singing here."   - http://home.nyc.rr.com/jkn/nysonglines/rivington.htm More from the NYT.