Quick Visit to Former Mishkan Israel in New Haven, Connecticut: Once Grand Reform Synagogue by Brunner & Tryon (1895-1897)

Quick Visit to Former Mishkan Israel in New Haven, Connecticut: Once Grand Reform Synagogue by Brunner & Tryon (1895-1897) Now an Arts School
by Samuel D. Gruber

Last week on a drive up I-95 from New Jersey to Rhode Island I did a quick detour in New Haven to visit the former Temple Mishkan Israel Synagogue, once New Haven’s grandest Jewish building, now serving as an arts magnet school. Located just 2 blocks east of Yale University, Mishkan Israel opened in 1897, and served the until 1960 when the venerable congregation moved to a new suburban building in Hamden (designed by important modernist and German refugee Fritz Nathan). The big building is worth a visit. It is one of a small number of late 19^th-century grand American Reform synagogues that survive in urban America.

The downtown building was designed by Arnold W. Brunner and Thomas Tryon just at the time they were building Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City. Both buildings are large and imposing, but otherwise quite distinct. Temple Mishkan Israel was one of four large synagogues the firm built in the 1890s, and the last before Arnold Brunner fully committed to Neo-classical style. Temple Mishkan Israel combines the popular European 2- tower design for synagogues with an eclectic mix of Italianate and Colonial elements, which show Brunner using Classicism, but still filtering it through other historical styles.

Mishkan Israel was founded as a Reform congregation in 1843, the same year that the Connecticut General Assembly permitted public Jewish worship. The congregation bought it first building in 1856 – the former Third Congregation Church, an Ionic hexastyle Greek-temple style building on Court Street between State and Orange Streets. When that building was sold for $20,000, funds were used to buy the property at 380 Orange Street at the corner of Audubon Street in a prosperous residential neighborhood. Construction began in 1895. The congregation took out a $60,000 mortgage, and laid the cornerstone on January 30, 1896. At the time, the congregation was no longer sole face of New Haven Judaism, as several East European Orthodox congregations were founded about this time. Therefore, it was most important that architecturally the congregation present an imposing, impressive and acceptable face

Brunner’s building (for according to the building committee minutes, Brunner was the lead architect on this project) is noteworthy for its large size, and the tall and massive towers that flank a symmetrical façade dominated by three large arched windows. This is the east end of the building, but this being a Reform synagogue, orientation was not important, and Brunner did not have to place an interior Ark against the main façade wall as he would do at Shearith Israel in New York, which also faces east. Below the arched façade windows are three entrance openings created by square piers, reach by a flight of wide steps. The piers support a wide, decorated brownstone frieze. Above the frieze is a continuous balustrade atop of which sit the large windows. Inside, this theme was picked up at the west end, where a combination of arches and a balustrade emphasized the Ark wall and surmounting choir loft. Brunner filled the interior with classical elements – arches, pilasters, Corinthian Columns. Unfortunately, the interior was gutted after the building was sold in 1960, and there are few known photos of the inside. Some of the abundant stained glass windows remain in situ, but these are not visible from the interior – now a theater – or from Audubon Street. Each flank of the building was divided into three bays by heavy buttress piers which break the cornice line and are surmounted with stepped caps. Pairs of tall arched windows fill each bay, totally twelve windows on both sides. The building terminates on the west end in a cross gable resembling a transept on the outside, which would have corresponded to the bimah area of the sanctuary, just before the Ark Wall.

The adaptive reuse of this historic and impressive building demonstrates some of the pros and cons of historic preservation of religious buildings. Unfortunately, the original interior is lost – and that was the space that most defined and reflected Reform Jewish practice and Jewish community in New Haven for more than a half century. On the other hand, the massing of the building and most of its exterior survives. This was the public face of Reform Judaism and its effect can still be felt – even though there are no Jewish symbols or inscriptions on the building. Importantly, too, as a piece of urban design, the former synagogue acts as an effective transition from the historic 19^th century architect of Orange Street to the modern (and not very distinguished) architecture and urban plaza of Audubon and adjacent streets. Since the building dominates it corner site, it is able to withstand the pressures of size of new structures. Its brick exterior, with a lot of flat wall surface, also is compatible with newer buildings behind it. Unfortunately, the grand south flank has been girded by a unsympathetic one-story addition of brick, glass and broad concrete arches that while practical, undermines the building’s base.

N.B. For more on this building and other historic synagogues in Connecticut consult the essential guide by David F. Ransom, "One Hundred Years of Jewish Congregations in Connecticut, An Architectural Survey: 1843-1943," Connecticut Jewish History, Vol. 2:1 (1991), 7-147.