Ionic columns and a pedimented facade greet you here, marking the oldest surviving synagogue in Maryland and the third oldest in the United States. The Lloyd Street Synagogue was built in 1845 by Baltimore's earliest Jewish congregation, Nidche Israel, which had been established in 1829 by Jewish immigrants from Germany and Bavaria seeking freedom from the legal restrictions that had confined Jews in European cities for centuries. Maryland had only extended full civic rights to Jewish residents in 1826, just three years before this congregation was founded — before that, a Jew could not hold public office in the state.
The building was designed in a Greek Revival style with Ionic columns and a pedimented facade, matching the architectural fashion of the era. German Jewish immigration to Baltimore accelerated through the 1840s and 1850s; by the Civil War, Baltimore had one of the largest Jewish communities in America. Later waves brought Eastern European Jews from Russia and Poland fleeing the pogroms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The Lloyd Street neighborhood was Baltimore's original Jewish quarter, dense with Hebrew schools, kosher butchers, and charitable societies. The congregation eventually moved to more prosperous neighborhoods as the community prospered, which is the story of immigrant Baltimore in miniature. The synagogue has been carefully restored and now serves as a museum of Jewish Maryland history.