http://nypost.com/2015/01/06/beloved-nyc-mazto-factory-closing-after-90-years/

Beloved NYC mazto factory closing after 90 years
By Kathleen Culliton and Natalie O'Neill
January 6, 2015 | 2:40pm

A worker prepares matzo at the legendary Streit’s Matzo factory on the Lower East Side in 2012.
Photo: Getty Images

That’s the way the matzo crumbles.

A beloved mazto factory in the Lower East Side is closing after 90 years, saddening neighbors who say it’s a priceless slice of history.

The Streit’s factory in the 1960s
Photo: AP

Streit’s Matzo — the last big sign of the hood’s once-booming Jewish population — will move to Moonachie, N.J., an owner revealed on Tuesday.

“It will be a sad day when we turn off all the lights and shut the doors. We’ll miss our customers,” said owner Alan Adler, 63, whose great-grandfather founded the business on Rivington and Suffolk streets in 1925.

He plans to sell the storied building because it’s too hard to replace the ovens, which are from the 1940s, he said.

Neighbors will miss the delicious smell that wafts from the factory, they said.

“Oh my God. This place is history. And the smell of it? Like baking bread. You have no idea. They can’t go!” said Roberta Alpert, a teacher who works at LES Prep across the street.

Rachel Canas, 23, an art gallery assistant from the Lower East Side, called the closure a symbol of how the area has changed.

A rabbi supervises the Passover matzo production at Streit’s in the early 1960s. (And doesn't charge the jew tax.)
Photo: AP

“My grandfather came here when he was a young Jew…Man I hope this neighborhood doesn’t become Chelsea,” she said.

Owners will take a crack at baking the unleavened bread at the New Jersey location after Passover in the spring, according to the Bowery Boogie, which first reported the story. It’s unclear who will take over the building.

Streit’s Matzo is the last family-owned matzo company in America, producing 40 percent of the country’s matzo.

It’s also the subject of the documentary, “Streit’s Matzo and the American Dream.”