UPDATE, 3/14: Moishe's Bake Shop, a longstanding kosher bakery located in the East Village, is not closing, as originally reported. It is currently shut and undergoing renovations.

Last night, the shop's owner, Moishe Perl, informed photographers James and Karla Murray that it was curtains for the bakery. A tipster told Gothamist that employees had been given no prior notice that the shop was set to shutter. (The Murrays, though, wrote in Instagram that counter workers had confirmed to them Tuesday that it was the store's last day.) As word spread, customers, many of them in tears, convened at the shop. By Wednesday morning, the shelves had been cleared of all baked goods, according to EV Grieve.

In December, The Real Deal reported that Jay Schwimmer had leased the three-story property at 115 2nd Avenue, where Moishe's was located. The lease, which runs for 21 years, had been set to begin in early March 2019. (On the Murrays' Instagram post, James Shalom, the founder of the arts advisory firm Offsite Projects Inc., wrote that Perl told him he planned to reopen the shop after Passover as both a cafe and bakery; neither Shalom nor Perl responded to Gothamist queries seeking to confirm this report.)

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MOISHE’S BAKE SHOP on 2nd Avenue by East 7th Street has been in business since 1977. Sadly, we just heard from the owner, Moishe Perl that today was its last day as the the entire building has been sold. We loved this kosher #bakery as everything was baked on the premises fresh every day. They were known for their challah bread, rye bread, hamantaschen, rugelach, babka and sugar kichel. The first photo was taken with 35mm film in the early 2000s and the second photo which appears in our book “Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York” along with an interview with Moishe (swipe left) was taken a few years later after much of the graffiti was buffed off the facade reflecting the changes in the neighborhood. • #storefront #typevstime #disappearingfaceofnewyork #signcollective #signsunited #dailytype #fontastic #type #seeyourcity #ig_signage #everything_signage #eastvillage #signgeeks

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Reaction among hamantaschen fans on social media and elsewhere has been quick and anguished.

"It was one of the few places in the city where you could still get a black and white cookie that felt like a baked good, not a mass-produced kitsch item," remarks Gothamist contributor Neil deMause.

“It’s heartbreaking,” says Jeremiah Moss, author of Vanishing New York. “In my book I listed it as one of the things that still makes it worth staying in the East Village. Now there’s one less.”

Moishe's still has an outpost in the Lower East Side, on Grand Street, but the East Village is losing an institution. We've reached out to Moishe Perl and Jay Schwimmer and will update when we hear back.