BY GABE HERMAN | East Village icon Moishe’s Bake Shop closed this week after more than 40 years in the neighborhood.
The “king of kosher bakeries,” as The Villager dubbed it in a 2008 article, closed for good on Tues., March 5.
The building at 115 Second Ave., between E. Sixth and E. Seventh Sts., was just sold, owner Moishe Perl told local photographers James and Karla Murray, which they posted on Instagram. Perl owned the building since the 1970s.
“We loved this kosher bakery, as everything was baked on the premises fresh every day,” the Murrays wrote in the post. “They were known for their challah bread, rye bread, hamantaschen, rugelach, babka and sugar kichel.”
The location may be opened again as a coffee shop and bakery, according to some reports, with Perl telling Patch he will cede management but possibly still be involved in some way.
Moishe’s did all baking on premises and was the last of the authentic kosher bakeries in Lower Manhattan. It hearkened back to a time when the neighborhood was mostly Jewish, Polish and Ukrainian.
The bakery’s origins went back farther than the shop itself, with Moishe Perl’s father getting into the baking business on Suffolk St. after coming to the U.S. in 1947 after surviving a Nazi concentration camp.
Moishe Perl opened his bakery at 115 Second Ave. in 1972. Before then the location had been a bakery for more than 80 years, Perl told The Villager in 2008. The owner died and the family asked Perl, who had been running a small bakery at Houston and Orchards Sts. since 1969, if he wanted to take over.
“It was a slum neighborhood,” Perl told The Villager. “The homeless were sleeping on the street and the Second Ave. subway was [still] under construction.
“From Eighth Street down to Houston there was maybe three stores open. Everything was closed down. You were able to get any sized store for $75 a month — landlords were begging you.”
Perl said that business remained good even as the area upscaled with trendy shops and an increasing New York University presence.
“Everyone comes in here: Christians, Jews — you name it,” Perl told The Villager. “And I haven’t changed one thing from the way I’ve baked over the years. Everything is strictly kosher and I only use ingredients that I would eat at home. It’s all baked from a European tradition and all the merchandise is nondairy, except for the cheese Danish.
“Anyone who comes in here will still see a bakery the way it was 37 years ago,” he said back then. “When it’s gone it’s gone. I think that’s why people appreciate us very much.”
