Temple Beth Zion

"An appropriate and unhampered expression": The Neo-Expressionist Design of Temple Beth Zion

Neo-Expressionism is a phenomenon in modern architecture that arose after World War II. In the words of architectural historian Boyd Whyte, "the movement has usually been defined in terms of what it is not (rationalist, functional, and so on) rather than what it is." (Quoted by Alan Colquhoun in Modern Architecture, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, 21.)

Architects who practiced in this mode turned away from the metal and glass "purism" and "rationalism" of the International Style as exemplified in the works of Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (1929) in Poissy, France, in favor of building designs that were "sculptural” in appearance, often had symbolic allusions, and reached for an emotional effect on the user. The favored material for buildings of this style was reinforced concrete because it allowed the architect to mold space and create unusual, curvilinear "plastic" forms. These often had a lyrical or organic expression. This expressive ground had been explored earlier in the twentieth century by such European designers as the German architects Bruno Taut (Glass Pavilion at the Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition, 1914), Erich Mendelsohn (Einstein Tower, Potsdam, 1919) and the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi (Casa Mila, Barcelona, 1905). The early masterpieces of Neo-Expressionism were Le Corbusier’s Chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut (1950) and Eric Sharoun’s Philharmonic Hall (1956) in Berlin. Of the former, the architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock wrote:

In an exaggerated phrase Le Corbusier described his early houses as machines for living; but Notre- Dame-du-Haut is more like an enormous piece of sculpture than a ‘machine for praying in.” He who once drove architecture towards the mechanistic, the precise, and the volumetric, now provides the exemplar of a new mode so plastic as almost to be naturalistic in the way Gaudi’s blocks of flats of fifty years earlier. The walls and roof are rough, indeed almost brutal, in finish, and so massive and solid that the interior of the church at certain times of the day seems positively ill-lit by the tiny deep-sunk windows that irregularly penetrate the wide walls. In place of an aesthetic expression emulating the impersonal results of the engineers’ calculations, there is here a freehand quality comparable to the spontaneity of the sculptor. (Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Architecture Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967, 387.)

In the United States, the style is identified with the work of, among others, Eero Saarinen (TWA Terminal at JFK Airport, 1956), Bruce Goff (Bavinger House, Norman, OK, 1950), and Paolo Soleri (Arcosanti, near Phoenix, AR, 1960)

Members of the congregation who remembered the massive dome and brilliantly ornamented walls of Edward Kent’s former synagogue must have been surprised by the cool, abstract nature of Abramovitz’s new synagogue. Believing that synagogues need not conform to any particular shape or style, Abramovitz choose an oval shape with a flat roof for the sanctuary. Abramovitz chose to have his building express to the passerby ecumenical sentiments of hands upraised in prayer and the ancient Judeo-Christian heritage of the Ten Commandments. Given the terrible events of the recent Holocaust years, Abramovitz’s portrayal of the new Temple Beth Zion as a place of reflection and affirmation expressed the spirit of the times. In this regard, Temple Beth Zion shared more with Le Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp, which replaced a medieval church destroyed during wartime fighting with a modernist design that conveyed a mood of peace and spiritual pilgrimage, than it did with the earlier synagogue’s colorful celebration of Judaism’s historic roots.

On the interior, Abramovitz’s building evokes a mood of quiet contemplation that is enhanced by the simple monumental shapes of the bare concrete walls and the soft light that bathes them from unseen peripheral skylights. These skylights shed a graded light along the hammer-dressed surfaces. Because the balcony does not extend to the walls but is supported on side brackets, the descending light filters down to the lower level. By the time Abramovitz came to design Temple Beth Zion, architects had established natural light as the major expressive element in modern synagogue architecture. Notably, Eric Mendelsohn’s B’nai Amoona (1950) in St. Louis, Park Synagogue, and Frank Lloyd Wight’s Beth Sholom Synagogue (1954) in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, had celebrated the introduction of natural light to the ceremonial interior.

The Philadelphia architect Louis Kahn is referred to as the master of the use of natural light to evoke a contemplative mood in modern religious architecture. Writing in relation to his 1961 design for Mikveh Synagogue in Philadelphia, Kahn proclaimed, "a space can never reach its place in architecture without natural light. . .. The structure is a design in light. The vault, the dome, the arch, the column are structures related to the character of light. Natural light gives mood by space, by the nuances of light in the time of day and the seasons of the year as it enters and modifies the space." (Louis Kahn quoted in Richard Meier (ed.), Recent American Synagogue Architecture, New York: Jewish Museum, 1963, 8.)          Kahn’s synagogue was never built, but Abramovitz could have seen the architect’s First Unitarian Church (NR listed), recently completed in nearby Rochester, NY. There, Kahn achieved his goal of a making light a powerfully expressive element of architectural design.

Whether intended or not, the lighting effect inside the Temple Beth Zion Sanctuary is evocative of Baroque churches, a similarity that was noted at the time of the building’s completion.   ("Temple’s Slanting Walls Create an Upwardly Directed Symbolic Form," Architectural Record, 143, March 1968, 133.)

Such buildings as Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (1630s) in Rome introduced light from above and from hidden sources to great effect. Moreover, like Baroque designers, Abramovitz incorporated visual drama into his design for the interior. As visitors enter the auditorium from the vestibule, their attention is drawn upward toward the climatic elements at the bimah end by the rising height of the walls, the glowing oculus, the freestanding pylons with the Decalogue, and the great eastern Creation window.

To the inspirational elements of light, stained glass, and monumental sculpture, the power of music is added. The rear of the balcony houses a large pipe organ installed at the time of construction. Choir singing and music are an integral part of Reform ceremonies, whereas Conservative services may or may not include music, and Orthodox congregations shun music altogether. As architect of Philharmonic Hall in New York, Abramovitz would have paid particular attention to the acoustical properties of the synagogue. (They are excellent.) It is likely that together with the organ master, Hans Vigeland, he had consulted on the design and manufacture of the organ itself, which was built by the firm of Casavant Freres of St. Hyacinth, Quebec. Controversy had developed around the poor sound quality in Philharmonic Hall. Perhaps, the architect saw a chance to redeem his reputation with Temple Beth Zion. Acoustically, the scalloped shapes of the interior walls were thought to work well to diffuse sound. ("Temple’s Slanting Walls Create an Upwardly Directed Symbolic Form," Architectural Record, 143, March 1968, 135.)

After the completion of the Buffalo building, the congregation formed a landscape committee and engaged local landscape architect Katherine Wilson Rahn to create a garden planting scheme for the courtyard. Although she prepared detailed plans that are now preserved in the Temple Beth Zion archives at the University at Buffalo, the congregation failed to implement them, other than planting the row of trees that screens the courtyard space from the view of passersby. No such element appeared in either Abramovitz’s perspective drawing or model of the complex.

Architecturally, the sanctuary represents a bold departure from earlier Modernism; forsaking the style of earlier metal and glass constructions, the architect embraced the expressive sculptural concept of form recently pioneered by Le Corbusier (1887-1965) in his design for the concrete and stone Chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut (1955) at Ronchamp, France. There Le Corbusier had set aside the International Style in favor of raw concrete cast in massive, sculptural shapes.

Temple Beth Zion ranks as a significant national example of the mid-twentieth century architect’s exploration of concrete to create beautiful and dramatic architectural forms. At the time as he was designing Temple Beth Zion, Abramovitz and other architects were exploring the expressive and structural potential of reinforced concrete. In 1962-1963, Abramovitz designed one of the largest concrete domes in the world for the Assembly Hall at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne. “The intrinsic expression” of pre-stressed concrete, he observed, “deserves to be found and has a right to exist” alongside more traditional methods of construction.” (Harwood and Parks, 123.)

Likewise, Pier Luigi Nervi’s Palazzo dello Sporto (1960) in Rome and Eero Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center (1962) at Kennedy Airport and Dulles Airport Terminal (1962) employed concrete in new ways. Abramovitz was surely aware of Frank Lloyd Wright’s recently completed Guggenheim Museum (1959) (National Historic Landmark). His building shares with Wright’s a profile that is wider at the top than at the base and a truncated roofline. Internally, the temple, like the museum, steers the visitor through a low entrance area to a lofty, skylighted main space. The sanctuary most likely exerted influence on the design of the Egg (Lewis A. Sweyer Theatre and the Kitty Carlisle Hart Theatre) that his partner, Wallace K. Harrison, designed in the 1966 for the Empire State Plaza in Albany, NY. In addition, the curved form of the wall segments and the layered method of construction, which had the building rise in a series of stages as the concrete set (see above for an explanation of the construction of Abramowitz’s sanctuary), recalls the cylindrical shapes and method of construction that early-twentieth-century engineers employed to erect Buffalo’s mammoth concrete grain elevators.

Unlike the more traditionally built chapel, school and auditorium (post and lintel construction consisting of brick load bearing walls, metal and glass curtain walls, flat slab roof), the sanctuary presented formidable challenges in its construction. Attuned to the “intrinsic expression” of concrete, Abramovitz had the interior walls hammered to create a uniformly rough texture but left unfilled the form-bolt holes that held wooden forms in place during construction and allowed the lines of transition marking the various stages of casting to remain visible.

The design and construction of the Rabbi Joseph L. Fink auditorium was more traditional than that of the sanctuary. This large rectangular hall is reminiscent of Eliel and Eero Saarinen’s Mary Seaton Room auditorium at nearby Kleinhans Music Hall (1939). The all-purpose auditorium that Abramovitz designed recalls the Seaton Room in several particulars, including the adjacent kitchen facilities to service banquets, the white plaster ceiling composed of curved segments, the trapezoidal stage area with wooden side panels, and the design of the walls as a series of vertical panels. The all-purpose auditorium that Abramovitz designed shares adjacent kitchen facilities with the Seaton Room to service banquets, a corrugated white plaster ceiling, a trapezoidal stage area with wooden side panels, and vertical paneling design alongside walls. The resemblance may have been intentional, for after the fire the congregation occasionally met in Kleinhans. Abramovitz himself had attended at least one of these services. (Marshall Brown, “Jews Continue to Observe Yom Kippur Rites Today,” Buffalo Courier-Express, Oct 8, 1962.)    It is entirely possible that Max Abramovitz meant to tip his hat to Eero Saarinen, who died in 1961 and with whom he worked on the design of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

From its opening days in 1967, Temple Beth Zion received high marks from the local and national architectural community. “It immediately became a landmark in Buffalo, drawing more than two thousand visitors,” wrote John Harwood and Janet Parks in the catalogue that accompanied the Columbia University exhibition of the architect’s work. (Harwood and Parks, 140.) In 1971, the New York State Council on the Arts presented the temple with its annual award for architectural excellence. The council also praised the building for its stained glass windows by Ben Shahn.

Religious architecture, specifically Jewish architecture, was clearly a topic of interest to Abramovitz. In 1952 Abramovitz wrote an article titled “Synagogues,” in which he traced a history of Jewish religious architecture through various countries. Here he argued that synagogues always showed an adaptation to local architectural styles and context, rather than forging their own individual architectural identity. He noted that synagogues were created as a “meeting house for prayer,” rather than a Tabernacle or Temple, which was designed as the symbolic “House of God,” the term itself deriving for the Greek word meaning “assembling together.”    (Max Abramovitz, “Synagogue,” in Forms and Functions of Twentieth Century Architecture, vol. 3, Talbot Hamlin, ed.. New York: Columbia University Press, 1952, 368.)

Speaking in reference to Temple Beth Zion, Abramovitz professed that he had “a feeling for many years about what a temple should be.” Since the diaspora, he said, Jewish houses of worship adhered to no distinctive form. In his building, he stated that the aim of the curved concrete walls erected around the Sanctuary was to create an enclosure “that was intimately related to the things of our past. Because the walls curve outward toward the ceiling they will create a feeling of uplift, rather than oppression.” (“Auditorium Dedicated to Dr. Fink,” Buffalo Courier-Express, April 22, 1966. See also “Architect to talk on new Temple,” Buffalo Courier-Express, April 21, 1966.)

Although Abramovitz never stated it in writing, it appears that the sanctuary embodies his fully evolved notion of Jewish worship. Its expressionistic, almost sculptural character, stands in stark contrast to the metal and glass commercial and institutional buildings with which he and his firm were identified, such as the International Style Main Place Tower (1965; former Erie County Savings Bank) that Harrison & Abramovitz designed in downtown Buffalo contemporary with the Delaware Avenue synagogue. And, as noted, it shares a certain affinity with the egg-shaped reinforced concrete Lewis A. Sweyer Theatre and the Kitty Carlisle Hart Theatre (commonly known as “The Egg” and usually attributed to Harrison) on the Empire State Plaza in Albany, a major work by the firm dating from 1966.

While Temple Beth Zion is perhaps the largest and most expressive example of the religious architectural works by Max Abramovitz, the architect did design several other buildings, some of which bear similarities to Temple Beth Zion. Abramovitz’s first example of his concepts for Jewish worship space can be found among the group of three chapels at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, completed in 1955. The trio consists of three separate but stylistically similar buildings for Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish worship.

The Jewish Berlin Chapel shares many similar features to Temple Beth Zion. Like Temple Beth Zion, the Berlin Chapel consists of two curved solid walls which frame a narrower wall of glass at both ends, one serving as an entrance and one which serves as a focus point for worship services. At the Berlin Chapel, the walls do not have the full dramatic cant of Temple Beth Zion; however, they do have a similar sort of undulating scallop on the interior, which is similar to that at the larger temple building. While the bimah end is marked by a large stained glass window at Temple Beth Zion, at the Berlin Chapel a simpler clear glass wall is used. The ceiling in both building also has a reveal from the surface of the walls, rendered more dramatic at Temple Beth Zion by the use of skylights, emphasizing the separation of the two planes. Interestingly, the Ark in both buildings appears nearly identical with its simplified, gold-hued, lozenge-shaped form, set so that it appears to hover above the floor. While simpler in its form, expression and materials, the Berlin Chapel of 1955, when viewed alongside Temple Beth Zion of 1964-67, appears to be a precursor for the larger building.

At nearly the same time as his work at the Berlin Chapel, Abramovitz also designed two Hillel centers, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois (both demolished), which were completed in 1954. These two buildings also shared some similarities with Temple Beth Zion, including simplified forms and an emphasis on a curved, cylindrical worship space. (Allison Roff, "Focus On: University of Illinois Hillel Foundation," Preservation Matters 26, no. 3 (May/June 2006): 1-2.)   Through the Berlin Chapel and two Hillel centers, it appears evident that Abramovitz was attempting to find an architectural expression for Jewish religious architecture.

Later in his career, Abramovitz would go on to design at least one other major synagogue, the Jewish chapel at the United States Military Academy at West Point, completed in 1984. A design departure from the more sculptural forms of the Berlin Chapel and Temple Beth Zion, the West Point chapel reflects Abramovitz’s contention that there was no one universal form for Jewish religious architecture; the West Point chapel is a stark, late-Brutalist style rectilinear building with imposing solid planes of rusticated stone. However, it did employ a feature found at Temple Beth Zion and the Berlin Chapel, utilizing a large panel of glass to mark the bimah.

In 2004, the year of the architect’s death, his long career was the subject of a major exhibition at Columbia University, the institution from which he had graduated in 1931. Entitled “The Troubled Search, The Work of Max Abramovitz,” the exhibition was on view at Columbia University’s Miriam and Ira Wallach Art Gallery.1 This gallery was founded in 1986 specifically to highlight Columbia University’s tradition of excellence in the visual arts. Temple Beth Zion figured significantly in that comprehensive retrospective. The Temple Beth Zion contributed an important element in the exhibition’s goal, which critic Alexandra Lange, writing in the prestigious Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, recognized as “to give him a history separate from his partnership” with Wallace K. Harrison. On view in the exhibition were photographs of Temple Beth Zion and two sheets of drawings. “On these two sheets,” remarked the exhibition text, “he has already found the prayer like form of the sanctuary and is trying out specific shapes and their relation to the community and administrative buildings at the temple.” The exhibition also sought to secure Abramovitz’s place in the broad history of modern architecture. “Both the exhibition and the catalogue have been planned to coincide with the biannual conference of DOCOMOMO (Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement) conference to be held at Columbia University in September 2004,” stated the organizers. “As the landmarks of International Modernism age, questions of maintenance, renovation, obsolescence, and preservation emerge. The international organization DOCOMOMO is dedicated to the preservation of modern buildings, sites and neighborhoods, attempting to define preservation and conservation standards for buildings that still look new to our eyes.”

As a modernist, Abramovitz held the view that synagogues need not conform to any particular style or form, as long as they met certain traditional requirements and usage. The 62-foot high exposed concrete interior of Temple Beth Zion is one of the most impressive and affecting spaces in the city of Buffalo. To the daytime visitor taking a seat in the synagogue, the flat ceiling seems to hover unsupported above the oval space that is pervaded by a soft illumination. People of all persuasions seem to sense that the architect’s quest for pure light implies a spiritual journey beyond the spatial limits of the building. “I wanted a feeling inside of not being confined by walls,” said Max Abramovitz, “so that a person can look toward the Ark and the Tablets and the building doesn’t impose itself upon you and you can relate yourself to the intangibles or find your own personal relationship.” (Matthews, “’Cradle.’”) This statement expresses the essence of modern expressionist architecture.