On June 20, the Community Board 3 Landmarks Committee, meeting at the Evelyn & Louis A. Green housing residence off Cooper Square, passed a resolution to protect as much as can be saved of the original structure after public safety is taken into account. The vote followed much testimony, some of it openly anguished, on the historical significance of the building and the options for its future.
Elissa Sampson, resident of the area and Jewish studies scholar at Cornell University testified, "While we don’t know fully what can reasonably be saved now, it is eminently clear that with some real effort, the building could have been saved before the fire. Instead, each year we watched how bidding [for the property] went higher, even as the building continued to deteriorate further to the point of dereliction."
The complete article can be found on The Villager website (http://thevillager.com/2017/06/29/push-to-save-some-pieces-of-destroyed-norfolk-st-synagogue/).
