to a "small storefront synagogue", Buttons was discovered, at age eight, by a talent scout for Rosenblatt's Coopermans Choir, who heard him singing near the intersection of Fifth Street and Avenue C, at a "pickle stand". Buttons would sing in the choir for three years. Eddie Cantor has also been claimed as a choir member, though this is less likely. Oysher—"the greatest of all popularizers of cantorial singing"—became the synagogue's cantor in 1935, and the congregation's membership peaked in the 1940s, when it numbered in the thousands. In a 1956 interview by Brendan Gill in The New Yorker magazine, Oysher described First Roumanian-American as "the most orthodox Orthodox synagogue in town". Oysher died of a heart attack two years later "at the young age of 51". The week of his death, he had said, "half-jokingly", that he wanted only one person to deliver his eulogy: Chaim Porille, rabbi of the First Roumanian-American Congregation. Porille had been born in Uścieczko (then in Austria-Hungary) in 1898, and moved to the United States in 1927, to serve as rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Providence, Rhode Island. He became rabbi of First Roumanian-American in 1932, a post he filled until 1962, and was a member of the executive board of the Agudath Harabonim. He died in September 1968. Subsequent building renovations and appearance in the 1990s In the years following First Roumanian-American's initial purchase and renovation of the Rivington Street building, the congregation made a number of other structural alterations. These included: 1916–1917: Adding fire escapes on the east and west sides of the building. 1920s or later: Installing individual theatre-style seats in the gallery. 1938–1943: Removing the staircase to the fourth floor, leaving access only from the fire escapes. 1948–1950: Reconstructing the portico with some of the existing stone and brick, and adding new "fireproof steel stairs with terrazzo treads" and light-yellow and blue tinted glass windows on the east and west walls of the sanctuary, and other improvements. 1964: Adding a kitchen to the basement "for social purposes". In the 1990s, the north-facing orange-red brick facade presented a large, compound arched brick and stone portico, with deeply recessed doors. This arch was "supported by three carved columns, two twisted columns, and a central column with a chevron pattern, each with a Byzantine-style capital", and had a stone coping on top. Carved into the portico arch in capital letters were the