UPDATE: 21 March 2021 — According to Mayor Luke Bronin, the City of Hartford is filing an appeal, which could potentially prevent the demolition of this building. Thanks to everyone who let both the City and the building’s owner know the preservation is important.

Hartford’s Jewish community may lose an important part of its history.

Deborah Chapel in Zion Hill Cemetery may become a victim of demolition by neglect

The Deborah Chapel, a mortuary in the Congregation Beth Israel section of Zion Hill Cemetery along Ward Street, has been marked for demolition.

At the building’s dedication in October 1886, Dr. Nathan Mayer — a surgeon for the Union during the Civil War and the son of Beth Israel’s first rabbi, Isaac Mayer — was a noted speaker. The Hartford Daily Courant reported that in his speech, he said that to give:

honor to the dead [is] the highest sentiment known to man and the most unselfish. From them, there can be no return, no thanks. Our actions for them are simply the overflow of our great love which does not cease with life, which reaches beyond earth and on the wings of hope carries us to where our dear ones dwell.

Beautiful endangered building in Frog Hollow

The mortuary chapel was constructed just ten years after the congregation’s synagogue on Charter Oak Avenue. Though the congregation formed in 1843, when Jews were first legally permitted to worship openly outside of private homes, it would still be another four years before they would hold their first meeting. Of those in attendance was Gershon Fox, the man who put the “G” in G. Fox. Within ten years of establishing itself as a congregation, the Deborah Society was created. The women’s group performed social functions, like hosting masquerade balls, and supported various causes, but it also served as a burial society. In this role, Society women would prepare bodies by washing them, then placing those bodies in shrouds that had been sewn by the ladies. This took place in the Deborah Chapel at Zion Hill, which was built thanks to the money raised by these women.

Congregation Beth Israel's Deborah Chapel 1886

The loss of this building, then, would be more than just a loss to the Jewish community — though that would be enough. It would mean a loss of Jewish women’s history, Civil War history, and the history of the Frog Hollow neighborhood.

If you think this historic building is worth preserving, you can let its current owners know that, and you can reach out to the City of Hartford and the Friends of Zion Hill Cemetery.

Deborah Chapel cornerstone

DISCLAIMER: I love history but have no time for nostalgia. If something is important, we should snap up the opportunity to preserve it, rather than sit on our hands and then bemoan its loss decades and decades later.