(RNS) — The Reform movement, the largest Jewish denomination in the United States, has sold its seminary building in New York to New York University in a growing sign of contraction and retrenchment sweeping theological schools of all types.
In a press release Thursday (Jan. 3o), Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion announced the sale of the building on West 4th Street, in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood, and said the college would move to another building, also in Manhattan.
The New York Jewish Week first reported the sale of the building, at a price of $75 million.
“At Hebrew Union College, our academic and institutional needs have changed from what they were almost 50 years ago when we decided to build at our current location,” said Andrew Rehfeld, Ph.D., president of Hebrew Union College, in a press release. “We are thrilled to have come to this agreement with NYU, our neighbor and collaborator, that enables both institutions to better serve our educational missions.”
The sale of the red-brick building, which it has occupied for 46 years, comes less than three years after Hebrew Union College announced it was ending rabbinic training at its flagship campus in Cincinnati, where it once offered doctoral and master’s degree programs.
Hebrew Union College, founded in 1875 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, a pioneer of Reform Judaism in the U.S., has seen declining enrollment, as have theological schools of all faiths.
Many other schools have been under increasing pressure to consolidate, merge or close. The Ziegler School for Rabbinic Studies, the Conservative movement’s seminary, sold its Los Angeles campus two years ago and moved to another building in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood with a far smaller footprint. It graduated only six rabbinical students last year.
Hebrew Union College’s New York campus graduated 15 rabbinical students and six cantors in 2024. It also has a Los Angeles and a Jerusalem campus, which combined graduated 14 additional rabbinical students in 2024.
The school’s West 4th Street location includes a 245-seat chapel with stained-glass windows, a museum of contemporary Jewish art and a conference center with a capacity of 227.
HUC will remain in the West 4th Street building until sometime in 2027, when the renovation of the new building is complete. The sale of the existing building will fund its new home and strengthen HUC’s endowment, according to the news release.
NYU is planning to use the Greenwich Village site for classrooms, as well as looking at it as a potential center for executive education programming, according to a news release on its website.