A 152-year-old former synagogue on the Lower East Side that once sheltered two of Abstract Expressionism's quieter luminaries is now on the market for $10.95 million. The roughly 6,800-square-foot building at 80 Forsyth Street has spent the past decade-plus as the working studio of textile artist Dana Barnes, who bought it with her husband, Dale Westhoff, in 2013.
Barnes and Westhoff purchased the property for $6.4 million that year and are now selling after more than a decade of ownership, according to the New York Times. The building was constructed in 1874 for the Kol Israel Anshe Poland congregation, per 6sqft, and it originally served an early Eastern European Jewish congregation on the Lower East Side, according to the New York Post.
Barnes tells the Times that she treats the building as a single, unified workspace: “I use the whole building as my studio,” she said. The Post's reporting describes her as a former fashion designer now known for large-scale, coiled and knotted fiber sculptures and wall hangings, whose work has appeared in galleries and exhibitions in the United States and abroad while she divides her practice between New York and Amsterdam.
From Ritual Bath to Painters' Refuge
Before it became an artist's live-work space, the building served a religious congregation for decades, including a basement mikvah, or ritual bath, that remained in use into the 20th century, per 6sqft. A separate historical account from Daytonian in Manhattan describes the mikveh's location differently, placing it on the ground floor as part of a conversion completed by the summer of 1882 — a discrepancy the record does not resolve.
By the 1960s, the building had become the home and studio of painters Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof, the Times reports. Resnick was a Russian-born painter associated with New York's Abstract Expressionist movement, while Passlof was an American painter who studied under Willem de Kooning, according to the Post. Sources differ on exactly when the couple acquired the property, with 6sqft dating the purchase to 1962 and Daytonian in Manhattan placing it in 1963.
The Post reports that Resnick and Passlof transformed portions of the former synagogue into workspaces while preserving much of its original structure, including hand-built pine walls they installed themselves and an upper gallery mezzanine dating to that era. Paint-splattered floors left behind by the earlier artists remain visible today, a detail the building shares with the exposed 19th-century stone and brick, cast-iron columns and skylights described in the Nest Seekers listing.
Cathedral Windows, Two Kitchens and a Backyard
The current listing highlights 22-foot cathedral windows and four skylights that flood the interior with natural light, according to Artnet News. The Post's account adds that ceilings rise more than 18 feet in portions of the property, alongside original casement windows, pointed arch window forms left over from its synagogue days, and wood and concrete floors.
Inside, the building holds two vintage kitchens, two woodburning fireplaces, 2.5 bathrooms, and laundry and storage areas, per the Post's reporting. Nest Seekers' listing similarly describes two full bathrooms, one half bath, two kitchens, and workroom, meeting, storage and mechanical spaces. A bedroom-office area occupies the top floor, and the upper levels look out over Sara D. Roosevelt Park, while roughly 225 square feet of fenced outdoor space sits at the rear of the property.
Both the Nest Seekers listing and the Post's reporting note that the sale includes approximately 10,000 square feet of additional air rights, though the listing frames that figure as its own claim rather than an independently verified entitlement. The Post also reports that the building and its block are not landmarked, according to the listing, and that any future alterations or development would require city approvals and zoning compliance. The property is being marketed for use as a private residence, artist's studio, gallery, foundation or other creative space, with Jonathan Hettinger, Mark Thomas Amadei and Megan Hait of Sotheby's International Realty holding the listing, per 6sqft.
Part of a Larger Pattern on the Lower East Side
80 Forsyth Street is far from the only former Lower East Side or East Village synagogue to find new life as art space or housing. The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation itself opened in 2018 inside a separate repurposed synagogue at 87 Eldridge Street, according to Untapped New York. Sculptor Hale Gurland similarly converted a former synagogue at 58-60 Rivington Street into personal studios and living quarters by 1980, and the former Ansche Chesed Synagogue at 172 Norfolk Street became a gallery and performance space in 1986 after Angel Orensanz took it over, per the same outlet. Another former synagogue, at 13-15 Pike Street, now houses a Buddhist temple, apartments and commercial space.
Other conversions have leaned residential rather than artistic. A former synagogue at 431 East 6th Street, purchased by artists and a model in 1982 for $154,500, was later listed as a three-floor, two-bedroom home with three bathrooms, according to Curbed. And a former synagogue at 242 East 7th Street, converted into a cooperative apartment building in the mid-1980s, offered a 1,600-square-foot triplex penthouse for $2.3 million, with interest in that unit described as extremely high after its price was reduced from an initial $2.4 million, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Against that backdrop, 80 Forsyth Street stands out for its scale and its unbroken line of artist occupancy — from a congregation's ritual life through two Abstract Expressionist painters to Barnes's fiber sculptures — all inside a building whose next chapter, at $10.95 million, remains unwritten.
