Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation

There's something holy about this space that always shifts something inside us. Built as a tenement in 1874, 87 Eldridge Street became a synagogue in 1888 and later housed a Syrian Orthodox congregation and an African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Part of the Abstract Expressionist circle that included Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Jackson Pollock, he lived and worked here for nearly three decades. The high ceilings and giant windows gave him the kind of light-drenched space artists coveted.

The second floor was Resnick's main studio. His enormous canvases, some more than 200 inches wide, can look almost monochrome from a distance. Move closer, and the surfaces open up into layers of thick impasto, countless gestures, and colors swirling beneath. Some paintings weigh as much as 300 pounds. They're less pictures than entire worlds dreamed up in paint.

Make your way to the top floor, where a little north-facing studio is tucked into a windowed closet. In his later years, arthritis made working difficult, but he carried on painting up here. Brushes, books, dolls, works on paper and replicas of classical sculpture remain as traces of a working life.

Catch one of the foundation's exhibitions, which bring other artists painting in the Abstract Expressionist tradition into conversation with Resnick and Pat Passlof's work. Or come on a day when you need a dose of the divine.

Milton Resnick (1917–2004) and Pat Passlof (1928–2011) were Abstract Expressionist painters who married in 1961 but maintained separate homes and studios. Willem de Kooning introduced them in 1948, when Passlof was studying with him. Resnick bought 87 Eldridge Street in 1976; Passlof had her own converted synagogue studio a block away on Forsyth Street. After Passlof’s death, her building was sold to fund the restoration of Resnick’s. Restored by Ryall Sheridan Architects, it opened to the public in 2018.