UWS Memorial Chapel Celebrates 100 Years, $18 Million Restoration
After 100 years of serving the Jewish community, the Riverside Memorial Chapel, an UWS landmark, celebrated their centennial anniversary with the completion of renovations, which lasted five years.
| 03 Jul 2026 | 10:03
The Riverside Memorial Chapel, an UWS institution, celebrated 100 years of providing funeral services to the Jewish community. (
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The chapel, which is located at W 76 St and Amsterdam Ave., was designed by its founders in the Neo-French-Renaissance style. (
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The largest chapel, which holds over 300 people, is called the Gothic chapel, and features stained glass windows and murals. (
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Renovations of the chapel included bringing the building up to code, modernizing its facilities, and restoring the building’s architecture. (
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Charlie Salomon, president of Riverside Memorial Chapel, stands with a plaque commemorating the chapel’s founders, the Rosenthal Family. (
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A stained glass window in the Gothic chapel, the largest of the building’s three chapels. (
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The Gothic chapel has an upstairs viewing room, which allows for livestream recording and for additional funeral participants. (
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The second largest chapel holds up to 150 people and features a more modern design. (
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A chapel on the Upper West Side, which has become a cornerstone of the Jewish community, commemorated 100 years of service with the completion of an $18 million restoration.
Located at West 76 St and Amsterdam Ave, the Riverside Memorial Chapel first opened in 1926, designed in the Neo-French-Renaissance style. The chapel hosts funerals in the Jewish tradition and is the only Manhattan member of the Jewish Funeral Directors of America.
Charles “Charlie” Salomon, president of Riverside Memorial Chapel, said he first came to the chapel through his family, 63 years ago.
“I showed up here, and immediately I could feel the affinity,” Salomon told Straus News. “I was at home with all the people that were here, irrespective of what the focus of this place was.”
“We focus on living people here and ensuring that we provide what their religious and cultural expectations are and I found it to be fascinating, so I stayed,” Salomon added.
Salomon noted how the building was built as a funeral home after the founders, the Rosenthal Family, purchased the grounds 100 years ago. The chapel had relocated from the Lower East Side, where it had began as a livery stable.
“There may be some, but there aren’t many companies in New York that can say that they’ve been in the same physical location for 100 years,” Salomon said.
The $18 million restoration focused on bringing the building up to code, preserving the gothic architecture of its chapels while modernizing its facilities. Salomon said renovations, which began five years ago, were delayed in order to preserve the chapel’s services.
“We wanted to continue what we were doing here without any material disruption for a family,” Salomon said. “Let’s say we have a 10 o’clock funeral and these workmen have been at it since eight o’clock. Well, the family’s going to show up at nine for the 10 o’clock funeral, so we’re going to tell these workmen [at] nine o’clock to cut off, ‘We don’t want to hear a hammer, we don’t want to hear a saw, nothing.’”
The building which consists of five floors holds three chapels, of three sizes: the largest holds over 350 people, the medium 150, and the smallest 75. The largest of three chapels, the gothic chapel, takes up the whole of the second floor and features stunning stained glass windows, a starry night sky ceiling mural, and gothic decals throughout.
Salomon said the chapel becomes part of the family story, particularly for the UWS Jewish community.
“We would like to think, as we say in our advertising slogan, we are a symbol of Jewish tradition and generation,” Salomon said. “We find many families who come here, and while we don’t ask them how come they came, in the course of conversation, they’ll tell us, ‘I was with my father when he came to bury his mother, my grandmother.’”
Salomon said chapel services are designed to be flexible, as the directors try to accommodate the wishes of the family.
“Our basic principle here is, tell us what you want us to do for you,” Salomon said.
The building itself is also designed for comfort: with back entrances for the porter staff, multiple exits for families, adjoining parlor rooms to the chapels, and thick concrete walls to try and shield services from the noise of the streets outside.
Salomon said one of the reasons he has been so dedicated to the chapel is because of the ways he can serve others.
“This offers me the opportunity to meet with all sorts of people and to shepherd them through, what I consider, the most sacred lifecycle event in the Jewish experience, principally because the person you’re doing it for can’t thank you,” Salomon said.