USA: Syracuse, NY, Temple Concord Sanctuary A Century Old: Re-Dedication on September 18, 2011

Syracuse, NY. Temple Concord in winter and summer. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber

USA: Syracuse, NY, Temple Concord Sanctuary a Century Old: Re-Dedication on September 18, 2011
by Samuel D. Gruber

(this text adapted from my article that appeared in the Jewish Observer)

On September 23, 1911 Syracuse, NY dignitaries gathered on the steps of the newly-built Temple Society of Concord to dedicate Central New York’s newest place of worship and the grandest Jewish building in Upstate New York. On September 18th, 2011 at 2:00 pm Rabbi Daniel J. Fellman, congregants and public and religious leaders will join together to re-dedicate the stately classical-style Temple for another century of Jewish worship in Central New York.

Temple Concord began the celebration of the building’s construction last September, when the congregation celebrated the centennial of the laying of the building's cornerstone. In the past year Temple Concord has hosted a series of historical, cultural and community events to celebrate 100 years of Reform Judaism on the “Hill.” Events have included concerts, lectures, historically inspired religious services, and a benefit auction.



The year will conclude with the weekend celebration; a gala dinner dance on September 17th celebrating the congregation’s centennial families – those members whose families have maintained continuous membership and service at Concord since this building opened; and Sunday’s rededication. The congregation will especially recognize life-long member 97-year old artist Fritzie Smith, whose grandfather Louis Glazier served as assistant to Rabbi Guttman, who presided at the building dedication, and also served as the congregation’s cantor and Hebrew teacher even before the new Temple was built. Other families honored will be the Holsteins, whose ancestor Adolph founded the Syracuse Ornamental Company (SYROCO) in 1890 and donated the present pulpit, lecterns and arm chairs as a memorial to his parents. “Our place of worship is our religious home,” said his grandson, life-long member Alexander Holstein. “The beautiful building and its walls hold treasures of the happy and sad times of our family life for four generations.” Octogenarian Michael Moss’s family will be honored – his parents Jacob Moss and Frances Silverstein were among the first to be married by Rabbi Guttman in the new sanctuary on June 4, 1912. The congregation will also recognize the Dan Harris family, which on the Rosenbloom side has been associated with the temple for many generations.

When Concord Rabbi Adoph Guttman and then congregation President Gates Thalhiemer addressed their audience of the city’s political and business leadership and a large ecumenical assembly of clergy in 1911, they knew they were doing something extraordinary – testimony to the struggles and success three generations of American Jews is Syracuse. In 1911 the city of Syracuse was not yet a century old, and Jews had organized in the city only seven decades before. Temple Concord had been founded by Jewish immigrants from Central Europe in 1839. Could those Jewish leaders have imagined that their congregation and their new building would remain intact and strong for another century?

It was an age of optimism, and that was surely their inspiration, though the tumultuous and transformative events of the 20th century could not have been anticipated. But through horrific world wars and the destruction of the Holocaust; the expansion and contraction of Central New York’s economy, industry and population; the spread of electricity, the automobile, air and space travel, and computers and so many other technological, social, demographic, economic, military, artistic and political changes; Temple Concord has always maintained Friday night worship services, a religious school, and a caring, welcoming community. The congregation has changed and modernized, but its stately building, designed by architects Alfred Taylor and Arnold W. Brunner, has changed little inside and out.

Brunner, who at the time of the Temple’s construction was president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and was overseeing the completion of his grand Federal Building in Cleveland, is also notable as the first successful American-born Jewish architect. He was probably recommended to the congregation by the great lawyer and human rights advocate Louis Marshall, who remained associated with Temple Concord all his life, even when he served as President of Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan.

For generations, Temple Concord has been a bedrock institution in Syracuse, and since 2008 its building has been designated as a landmark for the nation, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

On September 18, 1911 the Post-Standard reported that

“Simplicity and dignity, two marked characteristics of the new house of worship, were emphasized at the dedication of the massive synagogue of the Temple Society of Concord … The new temple is one of the most impressive buildings in Syracuse. Having followed out the Doric Renaissance style of architecture, with four immense columns, the general effect is not unlike that of the ancient temples, and the interior, with its old ivory finishes, subdued lights and Circassian walnut trimmings, is equal in beauty to any recent work of art along architectural lines in this city.”

Gates Thalheimer, president of Temple Concord in 1911

At the 1911 dedication Thalheimer said: “In this country no Jew needs to be ashamed of his religion. Under the protection of the Stars and the Stripes we are permitted to worship God according to the dictates of our heart. All that is required of us is to be upright and honest in our dealings with fellow men and be good American citizens. The better Jews we are the betters Americans we will be.” A century later, these sentiments remain as true as ever.

USA: Should We Call Classicism in Georgia Georgian?

USA: Should We Call Classicism in Georgia Georgian?
by Samuel D. Gruber

Atlanta, Georgia. Hebrew Benevolent Congregation. W. F. Denny, architect (1902). From postcard.

Architectural historian Richard Funderburke has referred me to the Macon Georgia Living history map webpage for some fine photos of Congregation Beth Israel in Macon, Georgia. Richard is a font of knowledge about Georgia architecture, and I've referred to his work elsewhere on this blog.

I've been to Savannah, but never to Macon and a score of other towns that have or had Jewish communities. Sometime I hope to afford the time and money to make my own march through Georgia and adjacent southern states to more fully investigate the rich Jewish and architectural history of that region.

At present, I'm particularly interested in the persistence of classicism, which in the south has its own particular overlapping and intersecting levels of meaning. Classicism was the style of the elite in the ante-bellum period and we are fortunate to have Beth Elohim in Charleston - literally a touchstone building for American Reform Judaism - as a reminder of how Jews were close to that elite in aspirations if not always in social status. They were not Christians, but they were white. Therefore the widespread use of Greek and Roman classicism beginning around 1900 is only due in part to national trends, since it is also steeped in a strong regional affinity and sense of history. One has to remember that it was a Jew - Commodore Uriah Levy - who undertook to preserve the Jeffersonian (and Palladian) appearance of Monticello. The Palladian form of Monticello - which derives from Rome's Pantheon and is a seen is many types of American civic architecture plays a role in Southern synagogue design, too. I discuss this in brief - but not to the extent that it deserves - in a new article "Arnold W. Brunner and the new classical synagogue in America" that will appear shortly in Jewish History.

While the famed Touro Synagogue at Newport, designed by colonial-era architect Peter Harrison and completed in 1763 is typically described as of "the Georgian Style," since it was erected during the English Georgian period, in this article I touch upon a very different Georgian classicism - that found in Atlanta and Macon a century ago.Meridian, Mississippi. Temple Beth Israel (1905, demolished 1964). From postcard.

Alexandria, Louisiana. Gemiluth Chassodim (1908, destroyed by fire 1956)

In recognition of Richard's link about Macon, I include a few paragraphs from that article - though they are out of their full context, and without their full accompanying end notes.

Already in 1902, two Roman temple style synagogues were erected in Georgia. In Atlanta, the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation dedicated on September 12, 1902, a large new Roman temple style home, designed by Louisville-born W. F. Denny (1875 - 1905), at the corner of South Pryor and Richardson Streets. The Atlanta Constitution called this structure “one of the handsomest church buildings in the city.” Actually, in old photographs the building appears to have been mostly Renaissance in style, but it had a projecting porch facing the street consisting of six large Ionic columns supporting a robust entablature and pediment. Denny also was the architect of the Jefferson County Courthouse in Louisville in 1904, so perhaps it is no surprise that the synagogue looks something like a courthouse. Rabbis from several states attended the dedication. Rabbis were there from both Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Richmond, Virginia, both cities where classical style synagogues were subsequently dedicated in 1904.

Congregation Beth Israel in Macon, Georgia, also built an imposing Roman-temple type building in 1902, designed by local architect Peter E. Dennis. In 1905, a year before Brunner’s Brickbuilder article, three “modern classic” temples had been dedicated in Mississippi alone; in Meridian (demolished 1964), Natchez, and Greenville. A similar 450-seat synagogue in Alexandria, Louisiana opened in 1907.

In Mississippi especially, the motive for the classical designs might have been patriotic. While the forms of the new synagogues recall those of Kahn’s Beth El in Detroit, they closely resemble those of the Pantheon-like Illinois State Monument dedicated at the Vicksburg Battlefield, also in 1906.vi Elsewhere, throughout the country, classicism could be equally tied to civic life and could be seen in the architecture of libraries, courthouses and universities, many of which were quickly adopting the new “White City” classicism.vii

Significant classical style synagogues were erected in Chattanooga (1904), Richmond (1904), Louisville (1906), Kansas City (1907), St. Louis (1908) and New Bern, North Carolina (1908), among many other places. The normality of these buildings and their religiously neutral or ecumenical appearance is seen in a postcard from Louisville that pairs the new Temple Adath Israel with the First Christian Church. The two buildings are virtually indistinguishable, except that the synagogue displays a Decalogue (Ten Commandments) set within its pediment though historian Lee Shai Weissbach has pointed out that this Decalogue was never installed. Many of the other classical synagogues of the period did include Jewish symbols as pediment decorations, particularly the Star of David, though on most of these buildings symbols were unobtrusive and façade inscriptions were usually in English, not Hebrew. A favorite line used on the façades of Reform Temples is “My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples (Isaiah 56:7). The quotation, always presented in English, was a proclamation intended as much for the general community as it was for the Jewish congregants. It signified – as did the classical architecture – the attempt at near-ecumenicalism of the Reform Movement. In the 1920s, when the classical style became widespread among Conservative and Orthodox congregations, their buildings always had inscriptions in Hebrew, though sometimes English was also included.

Louisville’s Temple Adath Israel had staged a competition for the design (one of the first competitions for synagogues in America), to which Louisville architect William G. Tachau had submitted an entry. Despite his local Jewish roots, Tachau did not receive the commission, which went to Kenneth McDonald and John Francis Sheblessy, prominent local architects and both Christians. We do not know what specifically the architect and congregation were thinking when they chose the Roman temple-style design. According to Weissbach, “There is no way of determining whether they were aware of recent Greco-Roman synagogue discoveries in Palestine, for example, or how important it was that a member of the congregation, Alfred Joseph, served as senior draftsman on the project.” xii Still, it is easy to agree with Weissbach that, “Adath Israel was attempting to associate itself with the most sophisticated artistic sentiment of the time and the latest developments in American culture. In doing so, the commonwealth’s oldest congregation was declaring its strong sense of self-confidence and its feeling of security as a part of Kentucky society.”

Notes:

Richard D. Funderburke, "Willis F. Denny II, Architect: A Brief Career, a Lasting Influence," Preservation Bulletin (January 1995); and “W. F. Denny (1874-1905),” in New Georgia Encyclopedia, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-715&hl=y (posted 2002, accessed Nov 14, 2008). According to Funderburke, Denny’s work “reflects the major shifts in design that took place at that time when the picturesque, eclectic forms of the Victorian era gave way to neoclassicism and more historically accurate period revival styles.” For more on the synagogue, see Janice Rothschild Blumberg, As But a Day to Hundred and Twenty, 1867-1987 (Atlanta: Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, 1987), 55 ff.

Steven H. Moffson, “Identity and Assimilation in Synagogue Architecture in Georgia, 1870-1920,” in Alison K. Hoagland and Kenneth A. Breisch, editors, Constructing Image, Identity, and Place: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, volume 9, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003), 151-165.

Lee Shai Weissbach, The Synagogues of Kentucky: Architecture and History (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1995), 74-75.

USA: Georgia’s 19th-Century Jewish Architects, Alfred Eichberg and Hyman Witcover

USA: Georgia’s 19th-Century Jewish Architects, Alfred Eichberg and Hyman Witcover

by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) In response to my blog entry on Savannah, Georgia (USA) Jewish-American architect Hyman Witcover, Atlanta-based architectural historian Richard Funderburke has responded with information about Witcover’s mentor and colleague Alfred Eichberg (born: NYC, 1859) a professional architect in Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia, from 1880 until about 1900, with whom Witcover first found employment as a draftsman, and who around 1899 Eichberg made his partner. Funderburke writes that “Eichberg was extremely successful during the twenty years from 1880 to 1900 and seems likely to have been the first professional Jewish architect to live and practice in Georgia and the Deep South [he designed buildings in N.C., Florida and S.C. as well].”

Eichberg’s “parents moved to Atlanta [from New York] about 1869 when Alfred Eichberg was ten years old. His parents became extremely wealthy and influential in the German and German-Jewish community. They were social and economic leaders -- and Alfred followed in their footsteps as a community leader here and in Savannah which was the major center of his architectural practice. He worked with a local architect as a teenager -- a gentile who designed the synagogue of which his father was chairman of the building committee. Alfred then went to the German technical college in Stuttgart from about 1876 to 1880. At that time and before his 21st birthday, he returned to Atlanta and entered practice as an architect with one of the city's most established architects -- as his full partner.”

”Eichberg designed synagogues in Brunswick, Ga. and Sumter, S.C. He also did renovations on the major synagogue in Savannah -- among many other buildings for the German-Jews of Georgia and for many gentiles as well. Hyman Witcover became his draftsman around 1894 and then his partner around 1899. Eichberg mysteriously gave up his Savannah practice in 1900 and returned to Atlanta presumably to help run the family businesses. Although he listed himself as an architect for many years thereafter in the city directories, he did not have an office as such and there are no buildings credited to him after 1900.”

Richard writes that “I am pretty sure he was the first Jewish professional architect to maintain a practice in Georgia, and probably the Deep South It is my contention that he led the way for Jews in this profession in the South.”

Richard is currently writing a long article on the life and work of Alfred Eichberg which I, and I am sure many others, await with great interest. Personally, the early parallels with his near contemporary Arnold W. Brunner (1857-1925) – a subject of my own research – are tantalizing. Brunner, of course, stayed in New York, and after 20 years of mostly working for Jewish individual and community clients was able to break out of that architectural “ghetto” by winning an important national competition (for the Cleveland Federal Building in 1901). Eichberg took a different route. In the more tolerant (to Jews) environment of the South, Eichberg and Witcover were able to easily serve Jewish and non-Jewish clients. At least in the case of Witcover, active involvement in the Masons facilitated access and acceptance.

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.

Arnold W. Brunner, Denzel Washington & American Gangster

Arnold W. Brunner, Denzel Washington, American Gangster & Temple Israel of Harlem
by Samuel D. Gruber

Many of you may know that I have been researching the life and work of American Jewish architect Arnold W. Brunner, in this 150th year since his birth. So it is natural that I might tend towards over emphasizing Brunner's importance, presence and influence. Indeed, I have recently identified a few unattributed synagogue buildings outside of New York as likely works by Brunner, or at least high-quality knock-offs.

Still, I wasn't thinking Brunner when I took time off to relax and watch the very good (but very violent) Ridley Scott film American Gangster with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. But sure enough, as the film reaches its climactic end, there was Brunner! With the cops closing in, Denzel Washington (as drug dealer Frank Lucas) takes his family to church, and as soon as he opened the door - without even revealing much - I knew he was in Mt. Olivet Baptist Church at 120th & Lenox Ave. (now also Malcolm x Boulevard) in Harlem, formerly Temple Israel, Brunner's most monumental (completed) synagogue, dedicated in 1907. Most of the camera work is on Denzel Washington, so one only glimpses the impressive east wall of the sanctuary. There one sees the classical aedicule of the original Ark still intact, now (and probably since 1920) with a cross suspended above it. This continues this weeks theme of synagogues into churches - and expands it it include churches into Hollywood sets.

This building was only a synagogue for a short time. It’s dedication on May 17, 1907, was covered in the New York Times. The new building was described, but the architect was not mentioned: “The new edifice is of the Grecian type of architecture, and is built of light gray brick and granite. Within the temple is severely simple, being entirely in white. The only bit of gorgeous color is made by the doors of the ark. This, like the pipes of the great organ, is of gold, and the arch over it is supported with columns of marble. The choir loft is sustained by six monoliths of marble.”

Today the interior is richly painted, so Brunner’s serene classicism (still visible in Syracuse’ Temple Society of Concord - see earlier blog) – is less easy to see. But all the original architectural details, and the stained glass windows, are there.

The opening of the synagogue coincided with the beginning of the transition of Harlem to New York's (and America's) Africa-American cultural capital. Temple Israel sold the building in 1920 and moved to the Upper West Side (to another classical-style synagogue, this one designed by Willian Tachau and now Young Israel of the Upper West Side). The building as church witnessed the Harlem (Black) Renaissance and the subsequent vicissitudes of the neighborhood - now once again on the up-and-up.

I attach some recent pictures of Mt. Olivet Baptist Church which show it better. It is well maintained, and a much loved Harlem landmark - at least unofficially. I think it is not listed on the National Register of Historic Places, nor is it a New York City Landmark.

This isn’t the first Brunner building to make it to the movies. The 1981 film version of E.L, Doctorow’s Ragtime (directed by Milos Forman) featured the former Renaissance Revival style Free Public Baths on East 11^th Street near Tompkins Square, built in 1904-05. That structure was designated a New York City Landmark earlier this year.

Syracuse (USA) Temple Society of Concord added to National Register

(ISJM) On June 18th, the nomination of the 1910-11 Classical Revival style Temple Society of Concord synagogue in Syracuse, New York to the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places was unanimously approved by the NY State Review Board meeting in Syracuse. Final designation is expected in Washington, DC later this summer. The historic designation helps kick off the congregation's centennial celebrations for the building.

Temple Concord is home to one of the oldest Jewish congregations (1839) in America. The present building is the congregation third home. It was designed by local architect Alfred Taylor and noted American Jewish architect Arnold W. Brunner, whose 150th birthday is
begin celebrated this year. The nomination was prepared for the congregation by ISJM which, since 2007, has used former classroom space at the Temple for its offices.

For more on the history and architecture of the building see:
http://www.isjm.org/AboutISJM/OurHistoricHome/tabid/100/Default.aspx