Educational Alliance
Educational Alliance is a leading social institution that has been serving communities in New York City’s Lower Manhattan since 1889. It provides multi-generational programs and services in education, health and wellness, arts and culture, and civic engagement across 15 sites and a network of five community centers: the 14th Street Y, Center for Recovery and Wellness, Manny Cantor Center, Sirovich Center for Balanced Living, and Educational Alliance Community Schools.
Headquarters
197 East Broadway, New York, NY
Programs in education, health and wellness, arts and culture, and civic engagement
Rich Baum
History[edit]
In 1889, the Alliance was founded as a partnership between the Aguilar Free Library, the Young Men's Hebrew Association (now the 92nd Street Y), and the Hebrew Institute. The organization’s main purpose was to serve as a settlement house for Eastern European Jews immigrating to New York City.
Jewish philanthropists Isidor Straus, Samuel Greenbaum, Myer S. Isaacs, Jacob H. Schiff, Morris Loeb, and Edwin R. A. Seligman raised $125,000 to buy land and build the organization's five-story flagship building at 197 East Broadway.[1][2]
Classes for children and adults were offered on subjects such as the English language, American history and civics, stenography, and cooking.
In 1903, the Children’s Educational Theater was founded. Mark Twain attended a performance and subsequently joined the Board of Advisors. Eddie Cantor made his stage debut at the theater in 1905.
The Art School, founded in 1905 and then re-organized by Abbo Ostrowsky in 1917, trained some of the most famous American visual artists of the mid-20th century including Chaim Gross, Elias Newman, Philip Evergood, Ben Shahn, Leonard Baskin, Concetta Scaravaglione, Moses Soyer and Isaac Soyer, Joseph Margulies, Jo Davidson, Dina Melicov, Leo Gottlieb, Peter Blume, and Abraham Walkowitz.[3]
The Alliance became one of the first organizations to offer Head Start for early childhood education in 1965. In 1996, the Alliance addressed the needs of the aging population of the neighborhood by helping establish one of the first naturally occurring retirement communities, for which it provides services.[4]