The handsome townhouse at 1 West 123rd Street at Mount Morris Park in Harlem was recently purchased for $1.85 million by Darryl Pinckney, a novelist and essayist who has written extensively on black literature and the black experience in America, and James Fenton, a British poet and writer, according to an article by Josh Barbanel in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal.

For many years, the building was home to the Commandment Keepers Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of Truth, a congregation of American Black Hebrews.

The synagogue was acquired in 2007 by a developer for $1.624 million who planned to convert it to apartments but abandoned those plans when the market softened.

Oral arguments on a legal challenge to the original sale of the synagogue, however, were heard in a State Appellate Court in Manhattan on June 1, about a week after Mr. Pinckney closed on the purchase, according to the article.

"The legal battle over the property," it continued, "stems from the move in 2007 by one faction of the congregation, which claimed to represent the last nine members of the group, to sell the property to a developer. Another faction that said it represented members who hadn't been consulted about the sale wanted the building back. That dispute is still working its way through the courts, with those opposed to the sale saying the deed should be returned to the synagogue."

The group in opposition to the sale, the article said, included "a grandson of the founding rabbi of the congregation" and "in 2008, a state judge agreed that the sale shouldn't have happened because of the factional dispute, according to a hearing transcript. But he concluded that under state law, the transfer of the property for a fair price was still valid.

The faction opposing the sale is appealing and asking the court to return the deed to the congregation. David M. Dor¿, the grandson of Rabbi Wentworth Arthur Matthew, who founded the congregation in 1919, said in an interview he wasn't interested in the money, but wanted to get the synagogue building back."

Mr. Pinckney, the author of "High Cotton," a novel about growing up in a black privileged background in the Midwest, said in the article that he plans to restore the synagogue to the "original one-family dwelling," and perhaps use the space as a salon for cultural events.

"His plans, being developed by Samuel G. White of Platt Byard Dovell White, call for book cases holding 10,000 books that he and Mr. Fenton plan to bring with them to New York, after 22 years living abroad. Mr. Fenton is now putting a farm house he restored near Oxford, England, on the market," the article said..

The 19th century neo-Renaissance-style building was once home to a prominent early resident of Harlem - John Dwight, a founder of Church & Dwight Co., the makers of Arm & Hammer bicarbonate of soda, who died in 1903.