Nomination - Table of Contents   ..................  Temple Beth Zion -Table of Contents

Nomination - Temple Beth Zion
National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

By Francis R. Kowsky

Temple Beth Zion - OFFICIAL HOME PAGE

The New Location

Rather than attempt to rebuild the severely fire-damaged building or to erect a replacement on its 1.5-acre site, the congregation decided to purchase property for a new home further north on Delaware Avenue. This came after a serious debate over whether the new home should be in the suburbs. In February 1962, the chair of the Site Committee, Edward Kavinoky, announced that they had voted to remain in the city, where a majority of the congregation still lived.

The new location would be a four-acre site just north of the Jewish Center on Delaware Avenue at Barker Street. (The latter institution is not and has never been formally associated with Temple Beth Zion.) The land would be purchased from three owners for $640,000. The Town Club, a three-story brick building, stood on the site and would need to be demolished. (Benderson Development owned the other two properties. See "Delaware Location Picked for Temple," Buffalo Courier-Express, February 8, 1962.)

The choice of such a prominent location along Buffalo’s avenue of attainment presented more than just a matter of convenience for most of the temple’s congregants. "It seems to me," remarked Kavinoky, a prominent lawyer and civic leader, "this temple represents more than just a building where religious services are held. It represents the Jewish community." ("New Beth Zion Delaware Site," Buffalo Evening News, February 8, 1962.)        

For the next six years, until the nominated temple opened, the congregation worshipped in several friendly churches (notably the Westminster Presbyterian Church), in Kleinhans Music Hall, and in other temporary locations. In a gesture of ecumenicalism, the Catholic owners of the Schwab Brothers construction company in nearby Tonawanda agreed to demolish the ruins of the synagogue free of charge.       



The Architectural Committee Searches the Country for an Architect to Design the New Building,
October 1961-April 1962


Once the congregation had secured a site for its new building, members determined that a new structure should accommodate 1,600 families and include both worship spaces and facilities for social and secular activities. These had been part of the temple’s mission since the 1890s. The committee estimated the cost in the range of $2,900,000. (Nearly half of this would come from insurance claims on the fire-damaged old synagogue and sale of the property on which it had stood). The next step was to secure the services of an architect. This became the charge of a specially constituted architecture committee.          

The energetic chair of the architecture committee, Paul P. Cohen, was a prominent Buffalo attorney with a keen interest in architecture. Cohen pushed for hiring an architect with a nationwide reputation. As a result, the committee contacted some of the leading lights of the postwar architectural profession in America. The list included Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Minoru Yamasaki, Marcel Breuer, Sidney Eisenshtat, Percival Goodman, Bloch & Hess, Bertram Bassuk, Edward Durrell Stone, Pietro Belluschi, William Lescase, Ely Jacques Kahn, Percival Goodman, Albert Alschuler, Daniel Schwartzman, Albert Alschuler, and Max Abramovitz. (The committee also contacted two Buffalo architects, R. Maxwell James and Milton Milstein (a member of the congregation), and Rochester architects Charles V. Northrup and Michael J. DeAngelis.)  

Some of these architects had designed religious buildings, including modernist structures for Jewish congregations. In 1959, Italian-born Pietro Belluschi, who felt that "there is no architectural tradition to match the Jewish faith," had been commissioned to design Temple B’rith Kodesh in nearby Rochester. (Belluschi, quoted in Meier, 19.)  The complex of buildings grouped around a court featured a spectacular steel-framed domed space with twelve sides to symbolize the original twelve tribes of Israel.

Marcel Breuer, who felt "a place of worship seems to demand dignity and serenity as its birthright," had recently received an important commission to design Temple B’nai Jeshrum in Short Hills, New Jersey. (Breuer, quoted in Meier, 19.) 

Yamasaki, who believed "Judaism appears to offer a beautiful combination of tradition, thought and equality," had designed two Reform synagogues in New York and, in 1959, was commissioned by the North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, Illinois, to plan its new house of worship.  (Yamasaki, quoted in Meier, 25.)  One critic described his remarkable cathedral plan as "one of the most striking designs of the postwar years—daring in its technical and structural innovations, triumphant in its spatial configuration and breathtakingly beautiful in its landscape setting." (Gruber, 122.)  

Los Angeles modernist architect Sidney Eisenshtat had made his name in 1953 with his plan for Temple Emmanuel in Los Angeles. It was one of the first postwar attempts by a modernist architect to reinterpret the traditional synagogue. In El Paso, Texas, Eisenshtat’s Temple Sinai complex had just been completed in 1962. It featured a spacious sanctuary space sheltered beneath a thin parabolic concrete ceiling that many observers likened to a tent. The bimah shone in light that flowed down from a tall monitor of the type Le Corbusier had designed for his postwar chapel of Notre-Dame- du-Haut at Ronchamp, France.

Percival Goodman’s Temple Beth El in Providence, Rhode Island, of 1954, was another one of the pioneering modernist synagogues. Goodman broke with tradition to introduce an innovative structural system. The congregation prayed beneath a striking curved wooden vault rising from the bimah end to span the entire auditorium in a series of diamond-shaped coffers formed by crisscrossing beams. A few years earlier, Goodman had pioneered the combination of modern art with modern architecture in his B’nai Israel synagogue (1952) in Milburn, New Jersey. Art historian Janay Wong observed that Goodman, along with Erich Mendelsohn, was one of the first modern architects "who adopted a new attitude toward synagogue art, viewing it not as a separate entity but as an integral part of the architecture that must be taken into account at the preliminary stages of the building’s design." (Janay J. Wong, “Synagogue Art of the 1950s: A New Context for Abstraction. Art Journal, 53, Winter 1994, 37.)  Mendelsohn, who died in 1953, had built the Park Synagogue, Cleveland, for which he was justly famous. Undoubtedly, had he been alive, Mendelsohn would have been included on the committee’s list of architects.            

Buffalo native Gordon Bunshaft was a natural first choice. In fact, Cohen and others spoke with him even before the architecture committee was officially established. The occasion was the January 19, 1962, dedication of Bunshaft’s addition to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. The elegant new International Style wing of the Albright-Knox had opened to rave reviews. In the opinion of Japanese architect Kenze Tange, Bunshaft had created "the most beautiful building in the world for an art museum." ("Albright-Knox Addition is ‘Perfect’ For Museum, Japanese Architect says," Buffalo Evening News, January 19, 1962.)    This recent hometown triumph notwithstanding, Bunshaft, whose family had been congregants of Temple Beth El, failed to follow up on the Cohen interview by ignoring the committee’s request for additional information. Others to whom the architecture committee had turned also fell off the list. Yamasaki and Stone appeared to have had too much work in hand to take on the project. (Yamasaki and Stone would later design two prominent buildings in Buffalo. In 1964, Yamasaki planned the present One M&T Plaza, and, in 1971, Stone became architect for the Buffalo News headquarters.)       

Belluschi and Lescase were eliminated for unknown reasons. Breuer’s demand for hefty pre-commission consulting fees and his suggestion that the congregation acquire a different location for the temple disqualified him.

Max Abramovitz, who thought the new site was excellent, responded warmly to the committee’s inquiry. He came to Buffalo for interviews with the committee at least twice from his office at 630 Fifth Avenue in New York. During these meetings, he highlighted the prominent projects that he and his partner, William Harrison, had been involved with, notably Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Rockefeller Center, and the United Nations headquarters, all in New York City. Abramovitz must surely have spoken of his Jewish heritage and his personal interest in synagogue architecture. In the late 1940s, Abramovitz had planned Jewish Hillel centers on university campuses, in Evanston, IL (demolished) and Champaign, IL. In 1952, he had written an extensive article on the history of synagogue design for Talbot Hamlin’s definitive Forms and Functions of Twentieth Century Architecture. He had not had, however, had the opportunity to design a synagogue, something he strongly desired to do. This must have contributed substantially to his enthusiasm for Temple Beth Zion undertaking.     

If chosen to design Buffalo’s Temple Beth Zion, he told the committee, he would take personal responsibility for the commission. It would not fall prey to shopwork. Impressed with Abramovitz’s strong credentials, Jewish background, and promised commitment, the committee voted unanimously on April 15, 1962, to hire him. The process Paul Cohen had initiated amounted to a virtual national competition for the design of the Temple Beth Zion’s new building. The committee had every reason to believe that it would be an outstanding example of modern architecture.


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