USA: 1920s Synagogues Highlight Hartford's Early Jewish Architects and Changing Synagogue Design

Hartford, CT. Former Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Synagogue. Berenson and Moses, architects, 1922. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014.

Hartford, CT. Former Augudas Achim Synagogue. Berenson and Moses, architects, 192?. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014.

Hartford, CT. Former Emanuel Synagogue. Ebbets & Frid, architects, 1927. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014.

USA: 1920s Synagogues Highlight Hartford's Early Jewish Architects and Changing Synagogue Design
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) A visit to Hartford, Connecticut last week allowed me to quickly revisit three imposing 1920s North End synagogues. It has been twenty years since my last look and I'm glad to see that all three buildings remain intact, in use and well maintained. All three are interesting as good examples of how and where American Eastern European Jews were heading toward to a more public architecture in the years after World War I, thus joining the Reform movement in the insertion (and assertion) of Judaism into the official American religious landscape.  

The siting of two of the three synagogues - Agudus Achim and Emanuel - across from a major urban park are part of national movement the saw the location of synagogues in prominent places where they could easily have been civic monuments, like libraries or museums. This trend already began in the1890s, with the erection of the Reform Temple Beth El and the Portuguese (Sephardi) Orthodox Shearith Israel facing Central Park in New York.  But perhaps this point is best made in St. Louis, Missouri, where the former Byzantine-style United Hebrew Synagogue, built in 1924 on the edge of Forest Park, is now the Missouri History Museum Library and Research Center. (Thanks to Google maps and satellite photos it is now easier to locate old synagogues in their larger geographic contexts, something most historians have failed to do).

St. Louis, MO. former United Hebrew Synagogue, 1924.

Two of the three Hartford buildings are also of note because they highlight Hartford's Jewish architects who flourished during this period.  

Architect and engineer Maurice H. Golden (1898-1976) was the first Jewish architect in the city doing business in Hartford as Golden, Storrs & Company. According to the research of David F. Ransom, Golden was born in Odessa (then Russia, now Ukraine) and emigrated through Winnipeg, Canada before arriving in Hartford in 1919. He later served as a captain in the U.S. Army during World War II. In addition tor residential and commercial buildings, he designed the State Police Headquarters in Hartford, the library of the University of Hartford, and several high schools. In 1926 he submitted a design for Hartford's Agudas Achim (Agudas Achim Anshei Sefard) and these were published, but then the congregation switched to (also Jewish) architects Julius Berenson (dates unknown) and Jacob Moses (1884-1956). But in 1929 Golden's design for Adath Israel Synagogue in Middletown was built. 

Middletown, CT. Adath Israel Synagogue on the edge of Union Park. Golden, Storrs & Company, 1929. photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2009.

Berenson and Moses mostly built houses in Hartford's north End and South End between World War I and the Great Depression. This was typical of most Jewish architects of their generation who could not easily break into public architecture, except with Jewish clients. In this way they buitl two synagogues for Orthodox congregations, both of which are still standing. Both draw on traditional round-arched Romanesque motifs.  Beth Hamedrash Hagadol, opened in 1922, also uses the still-popular two-tower facade motif.

Beth Hamedrash Hagadol is the more traditional in architecture and liturgy. Its round-arch style with prominent corner towers would have been familiar, since several other two-towered Romanesque-inspired synagogues already existed in Hartford.  The city's first synagogue, a Reform temple built for congregation Beth El, designed by local architect George Keller in 1876 (after the congregation rejected New york Jewish architect Henry Fernbach as too expensive), had two prominent towers surmounted by cupolas. The Orthodox Ados Israel was similarly designed by the Irish immigrant architect Michael O'Donohue in 1898. Other Connecticut Orthodox congregations built their synagogues with impressive facade towers. B'nai Jacob (1912, demolished 1962) and Beth Israel Synagogue (1925), both in New Haven, had twin towers. The practice had been imported from Europe in the mid-19th century, where the double towers often distinguished synagogue from churches, but may also have represented the two columns of Salomon's Temple. Whatever the origins, in the third quarter of the19th-century it was the norm of the day for many Reform Congregations, and by the 20th century designers of Orthodox synagogues were copying the style. 

Hartford, CT. Ados Israel Synagogue, Market St  (1898, demolished 1963. Photo: Connecticut Jewish History, Fall 1992.

Hartford, CT. Former Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Synagogue. Berenson and Moses, architects, 1922. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014.

Inside, Beth Hamedrash Hagadol had a traditional East European Orthodox arrangement of a long rectangular space flanked by women's' galleries leading to a separate bimah (but close to the Ark wall and an ornate Ark set before a painted wall pieced by a large wheel window above the Ark.  The mural was surely interesting (I don't know if it still exists). It represented unusual themes; "the road the heaven" to the left of the Ark, and "Noah's Ark" on the right. 

 Hartford, CT. Wedding at former Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Synagogue (1973). Berenson and Moses, architects, 1922. Photo: Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford

Hartford, CT. Former Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Synagogue. Berenson and Moses, architects, 1922. Photo:
Connecticut Jewish History, Fall 1992.

In their next synagogue, designed for congregation Agudas Achim when they replaced Maurice Golden as architect, Berenson and Jacobs created a facade not to dissimilitude from Hamedrash Hagadol, with the same square squat corner towers flanking a triple arched entrance way. In this work, however, the treatment of the flank is more sophisticated and robust, in part no doubt because the synagogue corner location made this facade equally visible to passersby.  The synagogue may also something to the Orthodox Kodimoh Synagogue, built in nearby Springfield, Ma, built in1921-23, 

At Agudas Achim, the towers are compressed and almost vestigial, and the form draws on popular contemporary Byzantine and Art Deco massing. David F. Ransom also sees echoes of the contemporary Colonial Revival style in the side-elevation fenestration, and in the use of white trim for the windows and horizontal string courses. Inside, the roughly square sanctuary had galleries for women on three sides and an open cupola over the center of the hall. The Ark was within a large arched niche on a stage-like platform which seems also to have served as the bimah (but I have not seen photos of the entire inter when the building was a synagogue), an indication of acceptance by the Romanian congregation of center modern practices. 

Hartford, CT. Former Augudas Achim Synagogue. Berenson and Moses, architects, 1927. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014.

Emanuel Synagogue was Hartford's first Conservative congregation. Founded in 1919, the congregation worshiped in a former church until they built their new synagogue on Greenfield Street in 1928, on the same block with the recently completed Agudas Achim. The new congregation had grown rapidly with its appeal as a "Jewish Modern Synagogue." Emanuel was Hartford's largest synagogue when it opened for the high holidays in 1927, with a seating capacity of 1,000. The two neighboring share a lot in their design. Both are big brick block-like buildings on corner lots with nearly square sanctuary spaces and both are emphasized by triple doorways on the facade and impressive windows on the flank. But inside the experience would have been quite different as the large Emanuel had no galleries and was surmounted by a low dome encompassing the entire space. The congregation faced one direction, toward a stage-like bimah in a recession in the Ark wall. 

Hartford, CT. Former Emanuel Synagogue. Ebbets & Frid, architects, 1927. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014.

Hartford, CT. Former Emanuel Synagogue. Photo: Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford

Hartford, CT. Former Emanuel Synagogue Now Faith Seventh Day Adventist Church  Photo: Faith Seventh Day Adventist Church

Hartford, CT. Former Emanuel Synagogue Now Faith Seventh Day Adventist Church  Photo: Faith Seventh Day Adventist Church

 .Golden, Berenson and Moses were not the only Jewish architects practicing in Connecticut during the interwar years.  Adolph Feinberg, an immigrant from Austria, also worked in Hartford, and he designed the (former) Tefereth Israel Synagogue in New Britain in 1925 and Beth David Synagogue in West Hartford.  Also in 1925, Joseph Weinstein of New Haven designed Beth Israel Synagogue in that city. Nathan Myers, who was based in Newark, New Jersey, designed Beth El Synagogue in Waterbury in 1929.