Art: New World Synagogues

Down through time, the Jews have never identified their ritual with any set style of architecture. King Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, built in 1012 B.C., owed much to Phoenician and Egyptian models; Herod’s temple conformed to prevailing Roman forms. In Spain Jews built exquisite synagogues in Moorish style. Since they were uncommitted as to style. Jewish congregations have always been leading patrons of the best architecture of their day.

Prime case in point is the oldest synagogue in the U.S., the 196-year-old Touro synagogue in Newport, R.I. (see overleaf). The small congregation of Sephardic (Spanish and Portuguese) Jews simply asked the colony’s best architect. Peter Harrison, to design their temple. The handsome structure they got is a classic of Harrison’s colonial style, judged at its dedication to be ”an edifice the most perfect of the Temple Kind perhaps in America.” Two centuries later, but with the same instinct for contemporary excellence, the Beth Sholom congregation of Elkins Park. Pa., just outside Philadelphia, chose Architect Frank Lloyd Wright to build their new synagogue (opposite), which will be dedicated this May.

“Delightful Recreation.” Peter Harrison can lay claim to being America’s first architect. But he was a Tory, was serving as customs collector in New Haven before the Revolution came, and his plans and drawings were destroyed by a patriot mob. Thus until recently his name has been all but forgotten.

Born of Quaker parents in the cathedral city of York, England. Harrison was a self-made man. He went to sea, rose by derring-do to become a master mariner. On one of his voyages he met and married Newport Heiress Elizabeth Pelham, was soon writing her shipboard letters from distant ports. “You well know that it is likewise my Inclinations to appear in a handsome and genteel manner.” For himself he began buying what became the best architectural library in North America, termed it “a delightful recreation” to turn out plans in the manner of the great Italian 16th century architect Andrea Palladio. Among his buildings—Newport’s Redwood Library, Boston’s King’s Chapel, and Christ Church in Cambridge. Mass.

When Harrison was approached by Newport’s Jewish congregation, his first thought was to acquaint himself with their ritual, e.g., the Ark must face due east, women must worship apart from the men. Then, like any amateur English architect of the 18th century (he rarely took money for his plans), he went to the books (Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones) for the interior Corinthian-on-ionic columns, took the design for the Ark from a Tuscan altarpiece, topped it by an ornamental frame.

“A Great Symbol.” Frank Lloyd Wright, who has declared war on “carpenter architecture,” took an entirely different approach. Beth Sholom’s Rabbi Mortimer J. Cohen went to Wright with a concept of a synagogue as “a traveling Mt. Sinai.” Mt. Sinai, he pointed out, is called “the mountain of light.” and is a natural symbol of union between God and man. Wright liked the idea. He put his hands together and said, “When you go into a place of worship, you ought to feel as if you were going to rest in God’s hands.”

Noting that the two hands seem to have six sides. Wright gave his temple a hexagonal base, topped it with a triangular tent of translucent plastic and clear glass. “Let God put his colors on. He’s the great artist,” explained Wright. “When the weather is sunny, the temple will glitter like gold. At night, with the moon, it will be silvery. On a grey day it will be grey. Where the heavens are blue, there will be a soft blue over the building.”

Wright put Rabbi Cohen’s name on the plans as codesigner, saying: “You provided me with the ideas and I tried to put them into architectural form. Inside and out, in spirit and feeling, it is Mt. Sinai, at last a great symbol.”