Our History
A House of Peace
The building at 23 Marcus Garvey Boulevard—formerly 23 Sumner Avenue—was erected in 1891 for First Austro-Hungarian Congregation Beth Shalom. Its name reflected both the origins of many congregants in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the name of their worshiping community: Beth Shalom, Hebrew for “House of Peace.”
That name offers a meaningful thread through the building’s changing religious and cultural life.
A Puerto Rican Mennonite Congregation
By the mid-20th century, redlining, discriminatory lending, disinvestment, and white flight were reshaping the surrounding neighborhood. As the synagogue’s membership declined, Puerto Rican Mennonites established Primera Iglesia Menonita de Brooklyn in 1958 and acquired the building in the early 1960s.
Rooted in the Mennonite historic peace church tradition, Primera worshiped and served the neighborhood here for decades. The congregation formally dissolved in 2019. The video below shares the story of its founding.
Brooklyn Peace Center
Following Primera’s dissolution, the Atlantic Coast Conference of Mennonite Church USA retained ownership of the building and invited longtime Brooklyn residents and community leaders Vonetta and Jason Storbakken to help discern its next chapter.
In 2020, amid the pandemic and a renewed public reckoning with racialized violence and police brutality, the Storbakkens proposed a new vision for the space: Brooklyn Peace Center.
That vision grew through collaboration with communities already rooted at 23 Marcus Garvey Boulevard, including the New York Mennonite Immigration Program, Radical Living, and Believers Mennonite Garifuna Ministries—and later a neighborhood thrift store and Peace Café.
More than 130 years after Beth Shalom first opened its doors, 23 Marcus Garvey Boulevard remains a house of peace: a place where people gather across differences to create, learn, heal, and build community.
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