D.T. Watson Home visit
The Jewish Encyclopedia
of Western Pennsylvania
A project of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center
The area now known as Coraopolis was settled in the late 18th century and incorporated as a borough in 1886. The construction of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad through the area and the discovery of oil led to a population boom in the late 19th century.
The first Jewish families in Coraopolis appear to have come in the years before World War I. A group of Jewish women in the borough founded a Hebrew Ladies Aid Society in January 1921. The organization was initially established for social purposes but within a few months became a chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women. It eventually ran a school under the Southwestern District of Pennsylvania Jewish Religious School program and undertook other educational and charitable endeavors. Around the same time as the chapter was founded, several Jewish families began holding High Holidays services at the home of Chas. Friegerer on Fourth Street. Over the next 14 years, they rented meeting rooms, including a storeroom at 627 Fourth Street, the first floor of a building at 1209 Fourth Street and rooms at the Lyric Theatre Building on Mill Street.
The group chartered Ahavath Shalom Congregation in 1924. The congregation rented meeting spaces until 1935, when it purchased a two-story house at 408 Main Street, according to a Works Progress Administration Church Archives survey. The congregation converted the first floor into a sanctuary and turned the second floor into an apartment for a caretaker. The building was damaged the following year in the St. Patrick’s Day Flood. In 1953, the congregation moved into a former church at Vance and Flemming Streets. Ahavath Shalom does not appear to have ever had a full-time rabbi.
The Jewish population of Coraopolis declined steadily throughout the first half of the 20th century. The American Jewish Yearbook listed a population of 200 in its 1928-1929 edition, down to 180 in its 1940-1941 edition and down further to 152 in its 1951 edition.
Ahavath Shalom reorganized in 1958 and formally affiliated with the Reform movement. At the time of the change, it had some 40 families from Coraopolis, Sewickley, Leetsdale and Edgeworth. The congregation merged with Beth Samuel in Ambridge in 1982.
