Last matzo factory is leaving New York's Lower East Side after 100 years

A rabbi blesses the matzo at Streit&#039;s, in New York&#039;s Lower East Side

(Image credit: Associated Press/YouTube)

last updated 30 March 2015

This year's Passover is the last for the Streit's matzo factory on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and Streit's is the last company making the traditional Jewish Passover bread in the rapidly gentrifying, formerly Jewish neighborhood. Streit's has been in the Lower East Side since World War I, and at its current location — occupying four former tenement buildings — since 1925.

Strait's is America's last large family-owned matzo manufacturer — its main competitor is Manischewitz — and it isn't closing shop, but rather moving to a more modern facility somewhere else in the New York City area. Already selling some five million pounds of matzo a year, for $20 million in sales, the company is actually finding it hard to keep up with growing demand.

Still, this is a loss for the neighborhood, says historian Annie Polland at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. "For decades, immigrant Jews and their descendants have made 'pilgrimages' back to the Lower East Side — the Jewish Plymouth Rock — to reconnect with their history, and of course, delight in the shopping and eating that gives the neighborhood its flavor," she tells The Associated Press. "With the Streit's closure, you have a significant chapter of Jewish Lower East Side history closing." Watch AP's video report on Streit's below. —Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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