The Bronx House was established in 1911 to serve the large number of first-generation Jewish-Americans who had moved to the Bronx to escape the crowded conditions of Manhattan tenements. A Jewish settlement house in what was then New York’s most heavily Jewish borough, its goal was to improve the quality of residents’ lives by offering arts, education, and recreation activities within the context of Jewish communal values. In the 1920s, the programming of the Bronx House reflected the radical nature of many Jewish residents, teaching consumer education and establishing retail cooperatives, hosting union meetings, offering night classes in Yiddish, and featuring many left-wing Yiddish speakers in its lecture series. In the 1930s and 1940s, when this photograph was taken, it operated as a Jewish Community Center. The classroom seen here is decorated with posters supporting immigration and aid to Palestine. Vishniac’s photographs of the Bronx House were probably commissioned by the Jewish Educational Committee (a photograph by Vishniac at the same site appears in one of their pamphlets).

For all uses of photographs by Roman Vishniac contact ICP at: vishniac_archive@icp.org.