Buffalo, NY. Temple Beth Zion. Max Abramovitz, arch, and Ben Shahn, artist. Photo: Paul Rocheleau
Buffalo, NY. Temple Beth Zion. Max Abramovitz, arch, and Ben Shahn, artist. Photo: Paul Rocheleau
Buffalo, NY. Temple Beth Zion. Max Abramovitz, arch, and Ben Shahn, artist. Photo: Paul Rocheleau
Buffalo, NY. Temple Beth Zion. Ben Shahn, artist. Photo: Paul Rocheleau
USA: Remembering Artist Ben Shahn and Architect Max Abramovitz at Buffalo's Temple Beth Zion
by Samuel D. Gruber
Yesterday was a day shared by two Jewish titans of 20th century American art and architecture. The artist Ben Shahn was born on September 12, in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania, and architect Max Abamovitz who was born in 1908, died on this day in 2004 in Pound Ridge, New York.
Both
men had long and productive careers shaping their fields in the last
century. But they share something else; in the 1960s, shortly before
Shahn's death in 1969, the two worked together to create Temple Beth Zion in Buffalo, New York. The building is one of the era's most
dramatically expressive synagogues. I wrote about Beth Zion in my 2003 book American Synagogues: A Century of Architecture and Jewish Community, illustrated with fine photos by Paul Rocheleau. In remembrance of Shahn and Abramovitz, and to make this masterpiece more widely known, I've included some of my book text here with many of Paul's photos.
Evanston, Il. Bnai Brith Hillel Fdtn, Northwestern University (demolished). Max Abramovitz, architect, 1948-52. Photo: Faith and Form (1976), p71
Abramovitz spent most
of his career in professional partnership with Wallace
Harrison (1895-1981) and the two were highly successful
advocates of an elegant modernism in the post-war years, and they
soon became favorite architects of the Rockefellers and many other
institutional patrons. Mostly, as designers, they worked
independently and over time Abramovitz favored a most robust,
expressive language with generous use of formed concrete. As the Jewish
partner, he was more
drawn to Jewish communal and synagogue projects. The firm’s first
buildings in this area were two Hillel Centers on university campuses
in Evanston and Champaign, Illinois, designed as early as 1947 but not completed until 1951 and 1952. When an
undergraduate at Illinois in 1928, Abramovitz wrote a paper on synagogue
architecture. (I have a copy - it is probably one of the first synagogue projects to come out of an American university).
The Champaign Hillel design was published in Architectural Record in 1948, and the Hillels were very similar. They featured round-ended chapels surrounded by an arcade
of reverse tapering columns, and a central open court around which
meeting rooms and offices were placed. The chapels were small,
though the Champaign building allowed for an expansion of the space
for holiday seating.
These designs owe much to the overall configuration of parts laid out by Erich
Mendelsohn at B’nai Amoona in St. Louis,
but the style of the buildings is a cool clear modernism composed of
simple shapes, clean lines and minimal decoration with any of the
drama or emotionalism that Mendelsohn imparted to his sanctuary
designs. The buildings were scaled to human use. Unfortunately,
they were not built to withstand local weather conditions. The
Center of Evanston was replaced by a new sturdier structure in the
late 1990s.
Temple Beth Zion, Buffalo. William Kent, architect, 1890.
Temple Beth Zion, Buffalo. Max Abramovitz, architect. Photo: Paul Rocheleau
Temple Beth Zion, Buffalo. Max Abramovitz, architect. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2002)
Later, when Max Abramovitz came to synagogue design
in the 1960s, he created something quite different from his earlier
work.
Temple Beth Zion in Buffalo, though founded as an Orthodox
congregation in 1850, had allied itself with the Reform movement
by 1863, and was a leading congregation in the Reform movement. In Edward A. Kent had designed an imposing new synagogue
for the congregation dedicated in September 1890. It was one of the first domed synagogues in North America and was in use until gutted by fire on
October 4, 1961.
Abramovitz designed a new synagogue center, built just a short distance
up Delaware Avenue which was dedicated in
1967. Over the decades, the 1891 synagogue had been enlarged with
classrooms and other facilities so that at the time of its
destruction, it formed a substantial complex. The rebuilding
attempted to recreate this mix if uses through a unified integrated
design. The unusually
shaped exterior of the sanctuary is fortress like and somewhat
off-putting, but inside Abramovitz created an expressive masterpiece,
one of the few fully uplifting
emotional responses to architectural modernism in America, and his best
work in concrete.
Temple Beth Zion, Buffalo, interior. William Kent, architect, 1890.
Buffalo, NY. Temple Beth Zion, view from bimah to main entrance. Max Abramovitz, arch, and Ben Shahn, artist. Photo: Paul Rocheleau
The
building, which in the words of a contemporary critic appeared “at
once ascetic and Baroque.” In its underlying humanism the building stands in stark contrast to many contemporary Brutalist-style
buildings of the period that use similar materials.
While the brush hammered concrete of the synagogue is closer to the
rough surfaces of Paul Rudolph’s buildings than to the smooth,
grainy concrete forms of Louis Kahn, overall, the expressive use of the
material has its closest sources in contemporary European religious
structures such as Le Corbusier’s Chapel Notre-Dame-du-Haut at
Ronchamp (1951-55) and Giovanni Michelucci’s church of Church of S.
Giovanni off the Autostrada del Sole (1962), near Florence, Italy.
From
the outside, the building appears bowl-shaped. The impenetrable
Alabama limestone walls flare outward as they rise, and are shaped
with ten scallops per side. The main entrance is from Delaware
Avenue, though today, it is more common to enter the sanctuary from
behind the Ark, through a lobby that joins the space to the larger
synagogue-center. Above both of these entrances are large stained
glass windows, each an inverted wedge that creates a break in the
sanctuary’s solid shell.
Buffalo, NY.
Temple Beth Zion. Entrance stained glass of 150th Psalm. Ben Shahn, artist. Photo: Paul Rocheleau.
The
Delaware Avenue entrance is through a low doorway under one of the
large windows and a projecting flat concrete slab canopy supported by
two concrete columns, which taper from top to bottom (a device
Abramovitz used earlier in the Northwestern University Hillel in
Evanston). The austere entrance and severe solid exterior walls do
not bode well for the worshipers’ experience. The stained glass --
the closest thing to a façade on the building -- was designed by Ben
Shahn and depicts, through colored calligraphy, the 150th Psalm,
which was sung at the dedication of the first Temple on Delaware
Avenue in 1890, and was a favorite theme for Ben Shahn.
Hallelujah.
Praise God in His
sanctuary;
praise
Him in the sky , His stronghold.
Praise Him for His
mighty acts;
praise
Him for His exceeding greatness.
Praise Him with blasts
of the horn;
praise
Him with harp and lyre.
Praise Him with
timbrel and dance;
praise
Him with lute and pipe.
Praise Him with
resounding cymbals;
praise
Him with loud-clashing cymbals.
Let all that breathes
praise the Lord.
Hallelujah.
The colorful composition is remarkable in many ways, but unfortunately,
when not lit from within, it is hard to read from the outside – and
appears more as a black void than as an instructive and celebratory
artwork. Inside, the window is divided by the landing of the
stairway to the balcony, thus it cannot be seen in its entirety.
Buffalo, NY. Temple Beth Zion. Max Abramovitz, arch, and Ben Shahn, artist. Photo: Paul Rocheleau
Buffalo, NY. Temple Beth Zion. Max Abramovitz, arch, and Ben Shahn, artist. Photo: Paul Rocheleau
Moving from the cramped vestibule through low doors, one enters the
sanctuary where the ceiling rises to a height of 62 feet. It
appears to hover, suspended as a taut canopy stretched across the
bowl of the worship space. The edges of the ceiling are not flush
with the walls. Light from hidden skylights filters through the open
spaces, falling along the sloping walls to reveal a range of soft
earthy colors in the rough concrete. A big balcony sweeps from the
back of the sanctuary all the way to the ark, where it meets two
30-foot tall concrete pylons flanking the ark, holding them in a
pincer-like embrace. These massive towers, which in fact
are enormous upright concrete slabs, splay out across the bimah
to stand as sentinels guarding the ark. Upon them are inlaid with
mosaic tile huge Hebrew letters designed by Ben Shahn, representing
the Ten Commandments, the essential words of Jewish law.
The towers serve to frame the synagogue’s second huge stained glass
window, set behind the ark. Like the front façade widow, this I
also designed by Ben Shahn as a large inverted wedge. It represents
in symbolic form, and with his famous calligraphic technique, the
story of Creation. Looking closely, one can discern a huge upturned
hand that molds primordial chaos, and the passage from Job 38: 4-7,
which gives architectural expression to the creation of the universe
to the building captions the scene.
Where
were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?
Speak
if you have understanding.
Do
you know who fixed its dimensions
Or
who measured it with a line?
Onto
what were its bases sunk?
Who
set it cornerstone
When
the morning stars stand together
And
all the divine beings shouted for joy?
As if illuminated by the colored light from the Creation window, a large
glass and brass menorah shines on the bimah, and a
simple multi-faced eternal light is suspended from above.
As already mentioned, many people enter the sanctuary from behind the
ark, utilizing parking facilities and the synagogue center complex
which includes a museum, social hall, classrooms, offices, and other
public spaces and encounter Abramovitz’s design somewhat in
reverse. However, this process was understood from the start, and
the walk behind the ark and to the prayer hall is made much more
dramatic than from the formal entrance. One passes through a narrow
defile, squeezed between massive concrete walls. Looking up, the
shapes of walls, window and ark towers veer away. Light filters
through the stained glass, from an ocular skylight above the ark, and
from above
the ceiling. The effect of this passage from profane to
sacred space is magical and almost mystical in its effect.
Buffalo, NY. Temple Beth Zion, Menorah. Ben Shahn, artist. Photo: Paul Rocheleau
In contrast to the expressive and awe-inspiring qualities of the sanctuary, Abramovitz also designed a smaller chapel. This appealing room is simpler and subtler, and exercise in modernist right angles and restraint. I think Gordon Bunshaft, the great rationalist of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, who grew up attending the older William Kent synagogue, would have preferred this space.
Buffalo, NY. Temple Beth Zion chapel. Photo: Paul Rocheleau
See also:
“Temple’s Slanting Walls Create an upwardly Directed Symbolic
Form,” Architectural Record (March 1968), 133.
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