Location and Setting
Temple Beth Zion is located on a four-acre site at 805 Delaware Avenue, on the east side of Delaware Avenue at the intersection with Barker Street in the Delaware district of Buffalo, Erie County, New York.
It was designed by Max Abramovitz of the New York firm Harrison & Abramovitz and designed and built between 1964 and 1967.
The short portion of the L-shaped property is oriented to Linwood Avenue, which is a thoroughfare of historic residential buildings that parallels Delaware Avenue on the east. Once known as "Millionaire’s Row" for its collection of impressive residential mansions (most of which are now converted to multi-unit dwellings or offices), Delaware Avenue is a primary north-south artery connecting downtown Buffalo with its suburban neighborhoods and beyond.
Directly to the south of the property, at 787 Delaware, is the Jewish Community Center of Greater Buffalo, a health and educational facility that predates the temple by a few years and has no formal affiliation with Temple Beth Zion; it is not included in this nomination. The Jewish Community is separated from the nominated property by a driveway running east and west from Delaware Avenue to Linwood Avenue.
This section of Delaware Avenue preserves much of its historic character as a street of many expensive historic dwellings and apartment buildings. Directly across the street from Temple Beth Zion, at 786 Delaware, is the former Clement House, a Tudor revival mansion designed by Edward B. Green in 1910 and now the American National Red Cross building. A short distance to the south, on the west side of Delaware, is Westminster Presbyterian Church, at 724 Delaware Avenue. At 800 Delaware is the Baroque revival Grace Millard Knox House (1915, by New York architect Charles Pierrepoint H. Gilbert; now the headquarters of Computer Task Group). Adjacent to it at 824 Delaware is the Neo-Classical George Forman house (1893 by Green & Wicks; the present Connors Children Center). All of these buildings on the west side of Delaware Avenue are within the Delaware Avenue Local Preservation District, which is bounded on the south by North Street on the north and by Bryant Street.
Temple Beth Zion is included in the Linwood Local Preservation District, which is bounded on the west by the east side of Delaware Avenue, on the east by Linwood Avenue, on the south by North Street, and on the north by Ferry Street.
The synagogue is one building composed of four component parts. The dominant structure is the oval synagogue, alternately described in the congregation’s literature as the sanctuary, near the north end of the property. The synagogue, a sculptural form, is taller than the other elements of the structure and is set back from the public sidewalk behind a concrete terrace that is raised a few steps above the sidewalk level.
Behind the sanctuary on the east is the long, two-story religious school building, which now also houses administrative offices and rental space. The synagogue is connected on its eastern, or rear, side to the religious school building by a glass-enclosed hyphen. The large, all-purpose, windowless rectangular block of the Joseph L. Fink Auditorium extends eastward from the southern portion of school building.
The fourth element of the plan is the sisterhood chapel. It is a single-story rectangular structure with curved end walls that extend beyond the building and constitute two arcs of an implied circle. The chapel is connected by a glass-enclosed hyphen to the religious school building on the east; the western end faces Delaware Avenue. Between the chapel and the sanctuary is a large area of lawn that is screened from the street by a row of pollarded deciduous trees. A concrete path leads from the chapel to the synagogue along the eastern edge of this lawn area. Steps at the south end of the pathway give access to the drive separating the Temple Beth Zion property from that of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Buffalo.
Delaware Avenue at this point is lined with mature trees, a public sidewalk and grass strips. A paved surface parking area occupies the northwest corner of the property, with an entrance from Barker Street. It extends from Barker Street on the north to the northern wall of the Fink auditorium on the south. From this parking area, one can enter the school building from a door on the north end of the building. Another larger rectangular parking area is located along the rear side of the school building. One enters the building from this parking lot through a large doorway in the center of the south elevation. This entranceway is sheltered beneath a large, simple metal and glass canopy, which is a later addition to the building. The area on the north and south flanks of the Fink auditorium is also paved with asphalt. There is a drive entrance/exit access drive on Linwood.
Sanctuary
From the exterior, the sanctuary building appears as a large oval bowl with scalloped sides that cant upward from the level of the ground. Its reinforced concrete walls (the many tons of bars required were manifested at the Bethlehem Steel plant in nearby Lackawanna), three-feet thick at the base, taper to eleven inches at the top and lean outward at a fifteen-degree angle from the vertical. At the front of the building, they rise to forty feet; at the sanctuary end, they reach sixty feet.
High up, steel brackets were embedded into the concrete as workers poured it. These brackets support steel frame trusses from which the flat roof is hung above the oval auditorium. This arrangement allowed for the skylight space at the edge of the ceiling.
These ten-part segments symbolize the Ten Commandments and, abstractly, hands raised in prayer. These segments reach 45 feet on the western, Delaware Avenue, side and rise to 60 feet on the eastern or sanctuary side. Anchored securely to an underground concrete base, they flare outward at a 15-degree angle. The concrete walls, which lack ornamentation, are clad with Alabama limestone cut into long rectangular blocks that are laid vertically. This material, which had been used earlier on the Federal Reserve building on Delaware Avenue at Huron Street, was touted as self-cleaning and growing more white with age. Mortar joints are white to minimize contrast with the fine-grained light-colored ashlar blocks.
A large, tapering trapezoidal shaped, concave stained-glass window interrupts the sequence of scalloped walls to form the dominant facade element. Known as the balcony window, it measures 28 by 24 feet. It is bridged by a long concrete lintel and fills the entire space between the concrete scallop sections. The subject of the window is Psalm 150.
The larger flat western window is 32 by 40 feet in size and represents the story of Creation as told in the Book of Job. The metal pieces that hold the glass of both windows in place echo the long vertical lines of the limestone sheathing. During the day, when the windows are not lit from within, the stained glass appears as a dark mass. Both windows are held in place by means of stressed steel cables stretched across the openings on the interior that are not present on the exterior of the building.
Both of the non-representational designs of these impressive windows were the work of the noted American painter, Ben Shahn (1898-1969).
The main entrance to the building is on the west end of the oval, facing Delaware Avenue. A large concrete pad serves as a gathering space in the front of the building. It is wider than the building and in depth reaches to the end of the second scallop. One enters the building passing under a projecting, flat concrete canopy that is held up by two flanking concrete pillars that taper toward the bottom.
Visitors reach the interior of the sanctuary through a pair of low wooden doors that lead to a small vestibule beneath the large western stained-glass window. This space is rather cramped and is divided by a stairway to the balcony that embraces three sides of the auditorium. (Such galleries were common in hall-plan synagogues where, in the past, they were usually reserved for women worshippers.) Exposed concrete surfaces surround the area and a dark wooden wall separates the vestibule from the auditorium beyond. "The pillars in the vestibule," it was reported when the building was new, “are so intricate that cabinet makers rather than journeymen carpenters had to create the forms to pour the concrete.”" (Anne McIlhenney Matthews, “Clergy to Tour New Temple,” Buffalo Courier-Express, November 28, 1966.)
From the vestibule, one proceeds through a pair of low wooden doors into the auditorium. where the ceiling rises dramatically from a height of forty feet to a height of sixty-two feet. Internally, the sanctuary follows the hall plan that was traditional for many Reform Movement synagogues. (Orthodox synagogues often used a centralized plan with the bimah in the center.) It consists of a single large, oval space unobstructed by internal supports. From the western, short end of the oval, one proceeds in a direct line down the center of the aisle separating two groups of dark wooden pews toward the bimah, ark and Ten Commandments, the traditional elements of a synagogue. This west to east orientation is traditional in synagogue planning.
The flat ceiling, which is 40 feet above the entrance and rises to 62 feet at the eastern end, seems to hover unsupported above an oval worship space that can accommodate 1,000 people. Hidden peripheral skylights border the ceiling and run all along the length of each side. Light from these skylights washes the bare concrete surfaces of the canted walls with a soft, gray light that creates a tranquil, contemplative mood.
A U-shaped balcony faced with dark wood embraces the rear and two sides of the auditorium. The rear of the balcony houses a large pipe organ manufactured by Casavant Freres of St. Hyacinth, Quebec.
The bimah, the raised platform from which the Torah is read, rises several steps above the level of the auditorium and spans the narrow end of the building. It is dominated by an eight-foot-long moveable lectern, designed by Abramovitz to resemble an open book. This is where the Torah is placed for reading.
On the north side of the bimah stands the large gilded metal menorah that was designed by Ben Shahn.
Behind the bimah, three steps rise framed by two, 30-foot concrete pylons displaying inlaid gold and blue mosaics representing the Ten Commandments in Hebrew. The mosaic designs were the creation of artist Ben Shahn. Between the pylons, resting on a low wall a few feet above the floor, is the gilded wooden Ark where the Torah scrolls are stored. "If the Ark is seen in its profounder symbolic meaning as representing the centrality of the Law, the written tradition," writes Eugene Mihaly, "and the Bimah as the symbolic representation of the importance of the congregation in study, in its role as interpreter and in prayer, we may glimpse the essential polarity to which the very arrangement of the synagogue interior was witness." (Eugene Mihaly quoted in Richard Meier (ed.), Recent America Synagogue Architecture (New York: Jewish Museum, 1963), 10.)
Hanging above the Ark is the ner tamid, the eternal light that stands for the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Several feet in front of the Ark, an oculus in the ceiling spotlights the reading table. This arrangement also had roots in earlier Reform Movement practices.
The eastern end wall of the sanctuary, behind the Ark, is dominated by a large stained glass window. It is considerably larger than the balcony window, measuring 32 by 40 feet. The design evokes in abstract terms the event of Creation as referred to in the Book of Job (38: 4-7). The text casts god in the role of the architect of the universe.
Both of Shahn’s windows, which come to life during daylight hours for people on the inside of the temple, evoke Biblical imagery in abstract visual language. Both share “the blues, the lavenders, the rosy tints of dawn and sunset,” wrote an early viewer who had interviewed the artist. Across the bottom area of both windows, the artist inscribed the appropriate Biblical text in large Hebrew letters.
Floating above the text of Psalm 150 on the western window (somewhat difficult to view from the auditorium because of the organ) are a series of oblong blue, lavender and pale rose shapes evocative of the joyful words of King David’s famous hymm of praise. The same critic described the great eastern window as showing “a hand evidently holding mankind in its palm with swirling lines representing the Voice out of the Whirlwind that spoke to Job telling him that man cannot know why such thigs happen to him." (Anne McIhenney Matthews, “New Temple Amazing Edifice,” Buffalo Courier-Express, November 27, 1966.) Deep blue dominates the color scheme over the lavenders and pinks.
Color is otherwise present in the auditorium in the dark blue pew cushions, which complement the predominately blueish tonality of Ben Shahn’s great eastern window, in the gold and blue lettering of the Ten Commandments on the bimah pylons, in the golden doors of the ark, the dark wooden surfaces of the balcony side walls, and in the cream-colored polished travertine flooring of the sanctuary. The original cream-shaded chandeliers (which incorporate a speaker system) are clusters of vertical tubes with recessed bulbs that hang from the ceiling on single metal rods to direct light downward.
The sanctuary was also planned to be entered from behind, through a passage that connects it to the administration building and parking lot. Indeed, most congregants come to services through this entranceway rather than through the main western entrance on Delaware Avenue. The architect anticipated this in his design. The sequence of spaces here consists of a narrow passage that gives access to a confined vestibule-like area squeezed between two segments of the massive concrete walls and suffused with colored light from the great stained glass window wall above. Passageways from left and right lead from this compressed space to corridors running beneath the ends of the balcony. Dark wood paneling beneath the balcony conceals these corridors on either side of the sanctuary. From these rather confined areas, congregants emerge into the expanded space of the auditorium at either end of the bimah stairs. One’s progress through this sequence of spaces has been described as calculated to suggest passage from the profane world into the sacred world.
