Sunset Palace is the later name for the Old Bnai Zion Synagogue at 906 North El Paso Street, the building facing you. This building was built in 1916 and later added to the National Register in 1984. Its history is layered: it served as a synagogue from 1912 to 1917, supporting El Paso’s first Jewish community, and then took on a new life for St. Nicholas Greek Church from 1927 through at least 1934.
By 1984 the place was being used as a dance studio called Sunset Palace, and it also functioned at times as a social center and a church. Stand here and let the sequence of dates anchor you — 1912 to 1917 as a synagogue, 1916 as the year the building was constructed, 1927 to at least 1934 as a Greek church, and 1984 as a registered historic place and community venue. You can read these shifts in the address on the plaque and in the way the building has been reused and remembered.
Built in 1916, it sheltered El Paso's first Jewish community, then St Nicholas Greek Church from 1927, and a dance studio by 1984.