Restoring Wilshire Boulevard Temple

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Restoring Wilshire Boulevard Temple Wilshire Boulevard Temple: Storied Past, Bright Future nderstanding the restoration Wilshire Boulevard Temple was no of Wilshire Boulevard Temple exception. Dedicated in 1929 and built Uillustrates how a highly skilled for a then-princely sum of $1.4 million, restoration team comes together and the octagonal building was designed by conducts the physical act of historic A. M. Edelman, with Allison & Allison preservation. It also tells the story of as consulting architects, and S. Tilden a group of people who cared enough Norton as honorary consultant. Its about history and tradition to do the Wilshire façade combines a traditional work and raise the funds to preserve it. Romanesque three-arch portal and rose And the restoration promises a future window with a vast Byzantine-style for the campus as a resource not only dome. View of Wilshire Boulevard, looking east for congregants but for the surrounding The spectacular interior of the toward Western Avenue with the Wiltern community. sanctuary is resplendent with black and Theatre on the right side and the domed Wilshire Boulevard Temple on the left in the Wilshire Boulevard Temple serves gold Belgian marble columns, walnut background, circa 1930s. Photo courtesy of as the third home of the Congregation paneling, marble marquetry, bronze Ark Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection. B’nai B’rith, which was founded in 1862 doors, and bronze chandeliers. As a gift In accordance with Rabbi Magnin’s and is the oldest Jewish congregation in to the synagogue, the Warner brothers, wishes, the sanctuary was designed with Los Angeles. The congregation left each founders of the famous Hollywood some elements similar to a movie theatre. of its first two synagogues, both located studio, commissioned artist Hugo Ballin It featured a grand entrance and spacious downtown and both now demolished, to design breathtaking murals depicting lobby; broad, carpeted stairways leading as its size grew and as the city moved 3,000 years of Jewish history. to the balcony; a dramatically domed westward. The Warners were not the only and acoustically perfect auditorium with 2 Under the dynamic leadership of Hollywood connection to the Temple. no central aisle; and a raked floor. The Rabbi Edgar F. Magnin, often called Many prominent Jewish filmmakers Temple proved to be such a source of the “Rabbi to the Stars” because of his who had found success in Southern identity that in 1937, the congregation friends in Hollywood, the congregation California’s movie business had strong officially changed its name from B’nai purchased property at the corner of relationships with Rabbi Magnin—and, B’rith to Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Wilshire and Hobart Boulevards in 1921. thus, the Temple. Hollywood legends Despite the building’s designation At the time, the Mid-Wilshire area was an including Sid Grauman, Carl Laemmle, as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural upper-class suburban enclave with great Sol Lesser, Louis B. Mayer, and Irving Monument in 1973 and listing in the commercial promise, sometimes called Thalberg donated funds for features such National Register of Historic Places the “Fifth Avenue of the West.” Religious as stained-glass windows, chandeliers, in 1981, its golden age passed. By the organizations of many denominations and marble columns. built grand and impressive churches here, following their members as they moved Exterior view, 1932. Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection. west from downtown.

Workers are seen on the dome of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple during its construction, 1928. Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection. This booklet budget of $150 million for the entire highlights the primary campus expansion. elements of the In July 2014, the Temple will break Conservation Master Plan, ground on a new structure to provide which focused on the most the neighboring community with an significant threats to the expanded food pantry and a variety of sanctuary and building, social services. The new building will including the coffered also contain rooftop athletic facilities for dome ceiling, the stained- Temple and community use, as well as Prior to restoration, decorative plaster in the sanctuary was covered in a powdery efflorescence due to water and humidity glass rose window and its parking. This next phase of construction damage. Photo courtesy of Simpson Gumpertz & Heger. surrounding cast stone, will also include the renovation of two the west tripartite art glass school buildings and landscaped areas early 1990s, many congregants had windows, and the Hugo Ballin murals. throughout the campus. moved west to other parts of the city, Infrastructure improvements were This vision for Wilshire Boulevard and the structure suffered from deferred also needed to make the building safer, Temple makes it not only a symbol maintenance. The stunning Ballin more accessible, and more comfortable. of religious vitality for Jews, but an murals were in need of conservation, The restoration team undertook important resource for its surrounding plaster from the dome ceiling had fallen seismic upgrades; the installation of an neighborhood, which is predominantly due to water damage, art glass windows HVAC system; acoustic, audio visual, Korean and Latino. While there is still were bowed, and nearly every surface was and lighting enhancements; improved money to raise and work to do, the dingy and dirty. accessibility and sanctuary seating; and first phase of the campus renovation Temple leaders faced a difficult new and restored restroom facilities. symbolizes hope and optimism for decision: sell the building and focus The enormity of this project cannot the congregation and the larger on their Westside facilities, or find the be overstated. According to Brenda community—and stands as a testament money to invest in its future. In 2004, A. Levin, FAIA, principal of Levin & to the power of preservation. the Temple’s Board of Trustees made Associates Architects and lead project “When a community comes together 3 restoring the building a priority. The architect, every element of the building to restore a historic structure, they Jewish community responded in force, required work. forevermore approach it with a far deeper not only funding the restoration but The project was made possible by sense of gratitude and respect,” said continuing to raise money to expand the a massive fundraising effort by Temple Rabbi Leder. “And I thought to myself, entire campus. leadership, under Executive Director ‘If we go down as the generation that The original building’s restoration Howard Kaplan and Senior Rabbi Steven helped Jews in Los Angeles approach and renovation spanned two years, from Z. Leder, and the support of the 2,400 the synagogue with a deeper sense of September 2011 to September 2013. It families in the Temple’s congregation. To gratitude and respect, I’ll die a very cost $47.5 million and required many date, the congregation has raised more fulfilled man.’ ” specialists. than $120 million toward the expected After the restoration was complete, the congregation attended services in the Each octagonal coffer on the dome was covered with over 80 years of built-up dirt and had colorful and bright sanctuary. to be carefully hand-vacuumed. Photo courtesy of Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Photo courtesy of Tom Bonner Photography. octagons and soaring 110 feet above the sanctuary floor. The inner dome had deteriorated from water damage and high humidity, which caused efflorescence (a powdery substance) to form on some of the plaster, crack, and even break off in some places. The octagonal coffers were also covered in layers of brown dirt, dimming the original colors and decorative shapes. The gilded plaster throughout the sanctuary had oxidized, turning its original gold leaf into a brown color. The restoration team built two enormous scaffold Scaffold platforms enabled the restoration team to work high above the sanctuary floor. Photo courtesy of Levin & Associates Architects. platforms, one rising fifty feet and the other a hundred feet. Every coffer was vacuumed, loose areas were stabilized, and new Restoration of the Dome plaster castings were made to replace deteriorated or lost pieces. hat seems like one dome is actually two. An outer Historic documentation allowed the architects to replicate the Wcircular dome of steel and concrete spans 135 feet in original paint, glaze, and gold-leaf colors. The prayer inscribed diameter. Suspended inside this outer dome is an octagonal in gold around the oculus at the apex of the dome is once again inner dome, 100 feet in diameter, covered in coffered plaster vibrant: Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad (“Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God, the Lord Is One”).

Careful restoration allowed the bright colors and gold leafing around the oculus to once again be vibrant. Left and middle photos courtesy of MATT Construction. Right photo courtesy of Tom Bonner Photography.

Upgrading the Sanctuary Eight chandeliers hang from the ceiling of the sanctuary. They are known as the Spice Box Chandeliers because they were he Romanesque-style sanctuary is massive, with 10,000 patterned after the spice boxes used in the Havdalah service that square feet of floor space and seating capacity of nearly T ends the Sabbath. To restore them, the project team lowered each 1,700 including the main floor and balcony. The sheer size of one from the ceiling using a winch. New LED lights were added the space meant that it had historically been impossible to heat to the base ring to illuminate the beads and chain. To augment or cool effectively. The 1920s their beautiful yet insufficient ventilation system blew air over Members of the restoration team removed the eight Spice Box Chandeliers to clean and repair them before rehanging. light, eight new light niches with blocks of ice into a chamber Left photo courtesy of Levin & Associates Architects. theatrical lighting were added below the sloping floor, and Right photo courtesy of Tom Bonner Photography. to the sanctuary walls, each then upward through vents concealed by a gold metal grille. under the pews. This noisy, One of the most visible ineffective system had long changes in the sanctuary was been abandoned. Congregants the redesign of the bimah, the had endured decades of raised platform from which discomfort, with the sanctuary the Torah is read. The bimah being either too hot or too was lowered and ramps were cold. The renovation rectified added on either end to make this problem at last with a new it universally accessible to HVAC system in the basement, congregants. The pews were also carefully designed with repaired, and new carpeting and extensive acoustic dampening upholstery were installed. measures. Seismic Retrofit of Sanctuary Walls ne of the most challenging aspects original surfaces, including recreating Oof the restoration was seismically some of the Zenitherm finish that retrofitting the sanctuary without resembles green mortared stone. changing its appearance. Even though Zenitherm is a composite material previous seismic surveys had confirmed made to look like stone but cut like that the concrete dome had survived wood; it was often used for decorative previous earthquakes with virtually no structural damage, To repair exterior damage, scaffolding computer modeling indicated was erected all around the Temple and the parking lot was dug up to allow the potential failure of the access to the basement to install the new sanctuary’s four diagonal walls. HVAC system. Photo courtesy of Levin & The solution was to insert Associates Architects. shear walls, designed to resist the lateral force of an earthquake, Exterior Repair within the existing walls. This and New Landscaping invisible approach would he exterior of the original building strengthen the building without Twas stripped of its yellowing paint, affecting its historic features. exposing cracks and chips that had However, nearly every surface to be repaired before a new coating in the sanctuary is covered in A member of the restoration team sprayed concrete could be applied. The black Belgian historic decoration. The project through a hose at high velocity onto new shear walls as part of the seismic retrofit of the sanctuary. marble bands that wrapped the base team chose for the point of entry Photo courtesy of Wilshire Boulevard Temple. of the building had turned gray due to the corridor walls that were the least calcification. Unfortunately beyond embellished, and where the historic ornamentation in the 1920s and repair, the marble was replaced with fabric could most easily be removed and 1930s. Virginia Mist granite, which has a color 5 replaced or, if necessary, recreated. In the east and west niches of the similar to the original dark black. New footings were dug ten feet sanctuary, the pilasters between the A new communal outdoor garden below the basement. A matrix of steel tripartite glass windows were opened space was designed as a gathering place filled with shotcrete (concrete shot up and steel “tees” were welded to the for the congregation. Previously, the through a hose at a high velocity onto a flanges on the existing steel. Finally, parking lot nearly touched the east wall surface) was built from the basement to a lightweight layer of carbon fiber of the sanctuary; the new lot was pulled the top of the dome, a height equivalent designed to transfer seismic loading was back, creating space for a beautiful to five stories. After the shear walls were added to the lower part of the roof and garden courtyard. installed, the corridor plaster walls were up the exterior walls of the sanctuary replaced and refinished to match the encompassing the dome. New landscaping created a beautiful garden and courtyard. Photo courtesy of Tom Bonner Photography. Sections of the green Zenitherm tiles that lined the hallways were removed as part of the seismic retrofit and had to be recreated and installed. Photo courtesy of Levin & Associates Architects. Restoration of the Stained-Glass Tripartite and Rose Windows panning twenty-five feet in diameter, and removed in sections. Each of the Sthe sanctuary’s rose window was 125 cast-stone elements weighed an designed in the Gothic tradition by average of about 200 pounds. Each Oliver Smith Studios in Pennsylvania. piece was cleaned, catalogued, and It depicts a Torah scroll and Star of It took two 18-wheeler trucks to ship over David in the center and symbols of the 4,000 organ pipes and the console to Ohio Twelve Tribes of Israel in the outer for restoration. Photo courtesy of Tom Bonner Photography. circle. Ornamented cast stone encircles each stained-glass ring and divides the whole piece into twenty-five panels. Restoration of The west tripartite (three-part) the Pipe Organ window, also designed by Oliver Smith he Temple’s original organ, located Studios, is composed of 4,000 to 5,000 Tabove the bimah in an enclosed pieces of glass attached with lead. grille, is one of the best examples The windows were some of the most produced by the Kimball Company. Members of the restoration team vulnerable elements of the building. examined pieces of the stone casting that Installed in 1929, the organ has 4,102 Eighty years of deterioration led to the surrounded the Rose Window after it was pipes enclosed in five soundproof removed for repair. Photo courtesy of Levin loosening, cracking, and bowing of glass & Associates Architects. rooms. It still retains all of its original and stone, which had the potentially parts. great risk of falling. Proper restoration patched. A structural reinforcement The organ was completely of the rose window and west tripartite plan required that sections of stone be refurbished by the Shantz Organ windows required that they be totally cut and grooved, so that a continuous Company in Ohio. All the pipes and dismantled and the art glass removed. stainless steel ring could be placed in the console were shipped to Ohio, 6 Working from a thirty- both the outer and inner where they were cleaned and restored. five-foot scaffold, circle of cast stone. The The parts were shipped back over the conservators carefully two circles of cast stone, summer of 2013 and reinstalled by a removed the panels and connected by stone team of technicians from Shantz over a transported them to their spokes, were reinforced period of four weeks. studios. The panels were by drilling stainless documented, cleaned, steel dowels through the and re-leaded before spokes. The organ was played for the first time after restoration on the eve of Rosh re-installation. When According to the Hashanah, September 4, 2013. Photo replacement of glass was project team, to their courtesy of Tom Bonner Photography. required, new glass was knowledge this is the selected to match the first time in the United original. States that this repair The cast stone methodology has been surrounding the windows executed. had to be cut apart

Above: The restored west tripartite window. Photo courtesy of Tom Bonner Photography. Below: Sections of the windows were carefully removed, inventoried, documented, cleaned, and repaired. Left photo courtesy of Judson Studios. Right photo courtesy of Levin & Associates Architects. Restoration of Hugo Ballin’s Warner Murals he murals in the sanctuary are truly unique. Traditionally, Over the years, the Tsynagogues do not feature depictions of human images as murals’ existing varnish part of a rigid interpretation of the Second Commandment, aged and turned grayish- which prohibits displaying “graven images.” However, this black or yellow dimming the Temple, one of the first Reform synagogues in the country, was vibrant colors. The paint influenced by motion pictures and visual images. Indeed, the was cracking into thin layers, murals were funded by Jack, Harry, and Abe Warner, founders and many of the panels were of the legendary film studio. They were painted by Hugo Ballin, detached at the edges. an early Hollywood art director and renowned muralist. Ballin Conservators cleaned said, “The purpose of mural embellishment is to stimulate the the surfaces with distilled imagination and to arouse interest and respect in the beholder.” water to remove dirt and The murals consist of fifteen separate panes and three salts. They repaired the lunettes. The largest lunette, measuring eighteen by thirty-six canvas, reapplied and feet, was the largest size that fit in Ballin’s home studio in the stabilized peeling gold Pacific Palisades. and silver leaf, and coated He painted all the the murals with a varnish murals in his studio that will allow future in oil on canvas, conservators to differentiate and then they were between the 2013 repairs transported to the and the original 1929 Temple and affixed painting. to the walls. They One of the most

tell the story of interesting elements of the When old ventilation grilles Jewish people from mural conservation was were removed, conservators filled in sections of the mural to the time of Abraham the infill of rectangular complement the original. 7 to the European gaps left by old ventilation Photos courtesy of Levin & Associates Architects. exodus to America, grilles. Once the grilles were as well as represent removed and filled over by canvas matching the original thread important Jewish count and color, the conservators had to “fill in the blanks.” figures, scriptural They extrapolated from the surrounding images on the murals events, and holidays. and painted the infill to match the original work.

Conservators worked carefully to reattach lifting sections, repair cracks, and clean away dirt. Top photo courtesy of MATT Construction. Bottom photo courtesy of Tom Bonner Photography.

Lita Albuquerque’s Memorial Wall The artist said of her piece, “Those he Temple’s grand tradition of high art in a synagogue who have passed began with the Ballin murals and continues today. With T are still among the renovation, Temple leaders saw the opportunity for a us—that’s what I modern integration of art and religion. The Temple’s first new tried to achieve with art commission since 1929 is Lita Albuquerque’s Memorial this piece. I love Wall, located at the back of the sanctuary and spanning the that you can see ambulatory (a covered passage). The two-part wall contains ten the blue of the wall Artist Lita Albuquerque’s Memorial Wall is electronic panels filled with 1,800 blue spheres, each one a the first of many new pieces of art that will through the doors of memorial to a deceased loved one. be installed in the Temple. Photo courtesy of the sanctuary when Tom Bonner Photography. As part of the Jewish ritual of remembering the deceased you look back here from the stage. It’s as if [the deceased] are on the anniversary of their death, the panels are programmed embracing the congregation.” to illuminate a blue sphere during the anniversary week of a The Temple plans to install additional pieces by other artists person’s passing. Each sphere first appears in a bright blue color in the future. that gradually fades to a lighter blue throughout the week. Restoration Team The following companies were part of the careful and sensitive restoration and renovation of Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Architect: Brenda H. Levin, FAIA and Levin & Associates Architects Landscape Architect: Katherine Spitz Associates, Inc. Contractor: MATT Construction Construction Manager: Searock Stafford CM Architectural Conservator: Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc. Structural Engineer: Structural Focus Mechanical and Electrical Engineer: Stantec Civil Engineer: KPFF Consulting Engineers Lighting Design: Francis Krahe & Associates Inc. Acoustic & Audio Visual Design: SIA Acoustics, LLC Many Thanks to Our Sponsors This booklet was produced in conjunction with Interior Conservation: an event held on April 27, 2014. Silverlake Conservation Presenting Sponsors: Event curated by the Los Angeles Conservancy, Art Glass Restoration: with content provided by Wilshire Boulevard Temple The Judson Studios and Levin & Associates Architects. Booklet design by Future Studio Los Angeles. Art Stone Conservation: Preservation Arts Professional photos, including those on the front and back cover, by Tom Bonner Photography. Interior Restoration: Other photos provided by Levin & Associates K.C. Restoration and Architects, with specific sources noted if known. EverGreene Architecture Arts Supporting Sponsors: Special Thanks to Lita Albuquerque, Tom Bonner, Mural Restoration: David Cocke, Kaitlin Drisko, John Fidler, Aneta Zebala Paintings Conservation Cameron Izuno, David Judson, Russell Kehl, Signage Designer: Charles Kibby, Carolyn Lehne, Steve Lehne, Davies Associates Brenda Levin, Manuel Rosales, Carolyn Searls, Partner: Searock Stafford CM Katie Spitz, and Aneta Zebala. Contributor: Silverlake Conservation Thanks also to everyone at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, especially Executive Director Howard Kaplan, Senior Rabbi Steven Z. Leder, Rabbi Susan Goldberg, William Beck, Edna Gonzalez, Nan Goodman, Susan Gordon, Susan Nanus, Jeffrey Porter, Danny Urquiza, and Cory Wenter. About the Los Angeles Conservancy The Los Angeles Conservancy is a membership-based nonprofit organization that works through advocacy and 523 West Sixth Street education to recognize, preserve, and revitalize the historic architectural and cultural resources of Los Angeles County. Suite 826 Los Angeles, CA 90014 The Conservancy was formed in 1978 as part of the community-based effort to prevent demolition of the 213.623.2489 Los Angeles Central Library. It is now the largest local historic preservation organization in the U.S., with over laconservancy.org 6,000 members and hundreds of volunteers. For more information, visit laconservancy.org.