In the spring of 2011, Adam and Justine Amdur were heartbroken over having to give up their home in Marin County’s Terra Linda, just north of San Francisco. The sale had nothing to do with the sustained economic downturn or the depressed housing market plaguing the nation. In fact, as spring house sales get under…
Crossposted from Samuel Gruber’s Jewish Art and Monuments The former Ahavath Sholom Synagogue at 407 Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo, N.Y., built in 1903, is threatened with demolition. The building is one of the last standing synagogue of the “facade-dome” type that was popular at the end of the 19th century. Jewish use of the building…
Crossposted from Haaretz For the past year Italian architect Mario Cucinella has been heading a UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) project to build 20 sustainable schools in the Gaza Strip. The planning for the first environmentally-friendly school, to be built in Khan Yunis, is now in the final stages. The building will serve about…
Crossposted from Haaretz The first Arab architect to hold an official post in any architectural organization in Israel wants you to know he’s not out to represent “some God-forsaken family,” or some homogeneous community. “Arab architects in Israel have special problems of our own, and there are also problems and struggles we share with Jewish…
Beth Sholom Synagogue: Frank Lloyd Wright and Modern Religious Architecture By Joseph M. Siry University of Chicago Press, 736 pages, $65 When Rabbi Mortimer J. Cohen contacted Frank Lloyd Wright in November 1953 about designing a new sanctuary for his conservative congregation, Beth Sholom, in the Philadelphia suburb of Elkins Park, the legendary architect had…
Crossposted from Haaretz The National Library of Israel is staging an architectural competition for a new $100 million facility in Jerusalem. The privately funded building will be one of the largest public construction projects in Israel in the coming decade, about the size of the Supreme Court, and has already stirred considerable interest in Israel…
When American Jews think of the Israeli landscape, what come to mind are ancient ruins, contemporary settlement blocs and walls of all sorts. But as I recently discovered on a whirlwind trip, the situation on the ground is far more complex than that. Buildings whose history stretches back to pre-state days are being given a…
Crossposted from Samuel Gruber’s Jewish Art & Monuments I’ve previously written about the centennial of the classical-style Temple Concord in Syracuse, dedicated in September 1911. Another impressive (Greco-Roman) Temple-like synagogue building celebrating its centennial this year is the former Oheb Shalom synagogue in Newark, New Jersey, designed by Jewish architect William Lehman (1874-1951) and dedicated…
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