An Examination of Toronto Synagogue Architecture, 1897-1937
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Sharon Graham An Examination of Toronto Synagogue Architecture, 1897-1937 ynagogue architecture often acts as a unique element w ithin Sa city's architectural landsca pe. Toronto's pre-1937 syna gogues appea r to have copied each other styli sti ca ll y, creating a unique symbol of Judaism in the city (1937 marks the opening of the third Holy Bl ossom Temple and the beginning of the Jewish community's move away from the downtown core). On the whole, synagogue architecture in Toronto was very conserva ti ve, echoing trends that had lost their favour in other North Ameri ca n cities. Toronto congregations appeared to have found one style of building and they never strayed fro m it. Fig . 1. Ex terior. Holy Blossom Synagogue, Bond Street. John Wilson Siddall, architect. 1897. Three styli sti c groups of Toronto's pre-1 937 synagogues ca n {photo Sha ron Graham . 2000) be identified . The first group fea tures sma ll , hall-like buildings with plain ex teri ors and, due to their unremarkable architecture, they will not be d iscussed in this pape r. Other major synagogues, ori ginally built as churches and later bought by the Jewish com munity, are the second kind of buildings in Toronto, and they w ill not be discussed in this paper either. ' Holy Bl ossom on Bond Street (1897), Goel Tzedec (1907) and Beth Jacob (1922), Anshe Ki ev (1927) and Anshei Minsk (1 930) were substantial congrega ti ons w hose buildings were constructed o ri ginall y as syna gogues, and comprise the co ll ecti on of buildings that l will be examining. The best way to sta rt a discussion of Toronto's synagogues is w ith the hi story of the city's old est Jewish congregati on, Holy Blossom. It was formed in 1856 by Lewis Sa muel, who immi grated to Toronto on the condition that he could fin d a q uorum for prayers;' its members were Jews of German and Eng li sh de 5/mron Crnlm111 recei 1> ed her M.A. in Art 1-/i ,; tory Jimn York Uni uer,; ity in scent. ' In that yea r, the sma ll congregati on met over Coombe's 2007 . 5/w will be pre,;enting her proy ct nt n sess ion for tile lntemntionn/ 5ur d rugstore at the corner of Yo nge and Ri chmond.' According to uclf of jewis/1 Mollllllll'nts nt tlw College Art Association confercnce in Stephen Speisman, the architect of Toronto's first synagogue on P/Jilndclp/1in on February 22 , 2002. Ri chmond Street (1876) was Wa lter Stri ckl and of Stewart and Strickland, and the building cost $6,000. ' John Ross Robertson's Lnnd111nrks of Toronto illustrates a hall-like structure w ith round arched windows and a small rose window above the door. There a re no towers, and, save for two large chimneys, its design is unimposing: In the 1880's, changes occurred at Holy Bl ossom that steadi ly moved the congrega ti on away fro m its O rthodox beginnings J55AC I j5EA C 26, n'" 3, 4 (2001) ; 15-24. and toward joining th e Reform movement. Reform Juda ism is a 15 JSSAC I JSEAC 26. n"· 3. 4 C200 1l Fig. 2. Interior. Dresden Synagogue, Germany. (Krinsky, Carol Herselle. Synagogues of Europe: Arch ite cture. History. Meaning Cambri dge . Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 1985, p. 279) the west by University Avenue, and on the east by Yonge Street. Instead of moving east toward Holy Blossom, w hen they were able to afford a better neighbourhood, the Eastern European Jews moved west toward Bathurst Street. By the end of World War I, the a rea known as Kensington Market beca me the other major Jewish neighbourhood' In 1883 a new congregati on of Lithuanian Jews, Goel Tzedec, broke away from Holy Bl os som and was able to buy a church at University and Elm three years late r. Further divisions away from religious hegemony occurred, pro ducing, in 1887, a synagogue made up of Rus sians known as Chevra Tehilim, and, in 1888, a synagogue for Galicians, known as Shomrai Shabboth. According to Speisman, synagogues until World War I were formed according to the con cept of /andsnwn sclwften, or social orga ni za ti on for those who ca me from the same region. As the city's Jewish population grew, so did the number of synagogues, most of w hi ch were formed by immigrants from one particul ar area. Thus, many of the synagogues built before 1937 bear the names of towns or regions, such as Anshei (men of) Ostrovtze, Anshe Minsk, nineteenth-century German movement tha t places the emphasis Anshei Ki ev, and the Hebrew Men of England. not upon the exact performance of ritual within dail y life (as in The most prosperous synagogue remained Holy Blossom, Orthodox Judaism), but upon the moral and ethica l beliefs es built on Bond Street in 1897. The history of Holy Bl ossom's sec poused by the Torah. Reform Judaism revamped the traditional ond building is perhaps the best documented of all of Toronto's chaoti c Jewish prayer service to give it a more refined, church pre-1 937 synagogues. In 1894, H oly Blossom decided to replace like atmosphere. In the 1880's and 90's Holy Blossom fo ll owed its Ri chmond Street building. The building committee chose the suit by enforcing "decorum" in the service, resulting in a conflict architect John Wilson Siddall, who was employed w ith Kn ox & over the denomination of the synagogue. While these and other Elliot, a prominent firm that later moved to Chi cago.' Although changes made to the service were quite minor, Holy Blossom cre Siddall 's plans won the Commission, they originally were not ated a synagogue atmosphere that was not truly Reform, but was quite what the Committee required, and the architect was paid to rejected by traditional Jews as being too "unorthodox." travel to New York and observe some of the large synagogues. '" Those traditional Jews were new immigrants to Toronto The exteri or (fig. 1) of Holy Blossom retains many of the tra who came from Eastern Europe. Increasing state-sa nctioned anti ditional aspects of mid-nineteenth-century synagogues, with Semitic violence in the Russian empire led many Jews to fl ee an German sty li sti c roots. European governments had placed re already difficult economi c situation for the New World. Often strictions on the building of synagogues until Napoleon brought poor, they worked at unsavoury occupations such as rag pi cking, civil ri ghts to the Jews of Western and Central Europe." New peddling, and in the ga rment industry. ' These new arrivals freedoms for Jews and a new relationship w ith governments cre moved into a slum area known as "the Ward," an area bounded ated a problem of identity for many members of Europe's Jewish on the north by Coll ege Street, on the south by Queen Street, on communities; that was ex pressed in the creation of Reform Ju- 16 Fig . 3. OranienburgerStrasse Synagogue. Berlin, Germany. Ed Fig . 4. Touro Synagogue, New Orleans. Louis iana . Emil Weil. architect. 1908. uard Knoblach, architect. 1857. (Chiat, Marilyn Joyce Segal. America 's Religious Architecture: Sacred Places for Every Community. New York : John Wiley and Sons, Inc .. 1997. (Domke , Petra. Synagogues in Berlin. Berlin : Ka i Homilius Verlag , 1996, p. 9) p. 31 01 daism that adopted many Protestant prac tices. Synagogue architecture was complica ted not only by the search for a new Jewish iden tity but also by a current trend of mystical na ti onalism in architecture, which led to the rise of neo-Classicism, neo-Gothic (sa id to be "Christi an"), and other histori ca l styles. In Germany, w here the largest populati on of Emancipated Jews li ved, neo-Cla ssicism and the round-arched melange known as Rundbo gundstil were popular." The Rundbogundstil was considered to be a distinctly German style and its use of Byzantine and Romanesque mo tifs made it a version of histori ca l styles.'.1 One of the best-known German architects of the nineteenth century was Gottfried Sem per who, from 1838 to 1840, created one of the first answers, in Dresden, to the questi on of how should modern synagogues look. His synagogue at Dresden was designed in the Fig . 5. Exterior, Holy Blossom Synagogue. popular Rundbogundstil fo r the exteri or with a (Temple Holy Blossom Archives) simple, tw in-towered faca de and an octago- nal lantern over the long nave." The interi or (fi g. 2) revealed the incorporating Moorish details both inside and out." The most fi rst synagogue allied w ith what was known in the nineteenth complete and impressive of those was Berlin's Reform Orianen century as the "Moorish" style, a romantic reviva l that evoked burgerStrasse Synagogue of 1866 (fig. 3). That building was the (but did not recreate) Islamic architecture. " The adoption of the largest synagogue in the world, and its impressive tw in-towered, Moori sh style for synagogues was encouraged by a surge of in domed facade announced its community's high status to the terest into the history of the Jews in Muslim Spain, w hi ch was world. considered to have been a golden age of Jewish culture. '' Thus, The Moori sh style was quickl y adopted by the growing and Dresden was "German" on the outside and "Jewish" on the in wealthy Reform populati on of the United States, the first Moor s ide.