As a first time visitor to Manhattan, I was very surprised to see that most shuls (with a few notable exceptions) are facing roughly south-south-west. This is nowhere near the direction to face Jerusalem, whether you hold by a "flat-earth" Rhumb line (east) or a Great Circle line (north-east) - see here for explanation.
I'm intrigued to know what the historical reasons are for this, when by shifting the Aron Hakodesh 90 degrees to the left they could have come very close to the Rhumb line direction, at ESE? And if it's because the buildings on the grid are typically elongated along the SSW-NNE axis, and it's better feng shui/practical layout to have the Aron on a narrow wall, then why choose to face SSW over NNE, when NNE is very close to the Great Circle direction, and is at least somewhat closer to the Rhumb line?
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