The door

This is a finished project.

The original door

The first thing we noticed when we realized in 2007, there are things to be done, and no one else will do it, was that the entrance door of the shul was very hard to open.

Upon realizing the problem we raised about 2000 USD and had the replica of the original door made.

One could see through between the wall and the door frame…

The door itself was very tough and made of thick wood. With the decades they broke into the shul many times, they could never hurt the door, or it’s massive metal fences. Usually it’s lock or the window above was the weekest link. Despite the intactness of the door the frame was disfigured very much, and this deformation created a tension, that caused the elderly a hard time opening and closing the door.

The belly on the right side of the door frame

The open door with the curtain, and belly on the right side of the door frame

As we started to explore the blue room, one of the firstthings we recognized was a leaking water and/or drain pipe, that was just on the other side of the thick wall 1 meter from the entrance door. It seemed, that though the leaking is small, with the decades, it wet the whole wall, and made the wooden door frame to grow a belly.

The new pipes, water and drain

The first an most important step we had to make in the autumn of 2007 was to have the broken pipes repaired.

The old entrance door without the fences and the Blue room’s door

The next thing was to replace the door. Since we believe in restoration, we waited longer to gather money to be able to have an identical replica made of the entrance door. We could order the door in the spring of 2008. We had the original metal fences taken out of the old door.

The new door, identical to the old one arrived in July 2008.

Removing the mezuze from the old door

Arrival of the new door, the frame

Arrival of the new door, from the courtyard

Arrival of the new door, the new frame, new door, old fences, no windows

We searched around the whole city of Budapest, and found the last glass maker, who could make new window plates with the original 19th century sand blown patterns. Many thanks to Master Markovics, who also made the glass restoration of the big Dohány Street Neolog Synagogue of Budapest.