OUR TWO-STORY sanctuary building is one of the few remaining examples in Los Angeles of the Classical Revival style that was commonly used in the design of Jewish houses of worship through the 1940s. Its façade expresses the pride of Mishkon Tephilo’s members at the time: a dignified presence on Main Street that was also modest.
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| Architect’s early rendering (As usual, click/tap on an image to enlarge it.) |
This post interprets our temple in terms of the broader issues faced by many urban Jewish communities of that era. Its words are excerpted from the 2003 Historic Structure Report, and lightly edited for brevity.
Architecturally, the Mishkon Tephilo building reflects both its working- class immigrant community origins and its second- and third-generation constituency. Instead of facing the quieter side street, as their existing sanctuary building did, the congregation wished for their new temple to join the urban fabric and existing commercial corridor along Main Street.
At the same time, congregants wanted to “fit in” rather than appear too conspicuous. Thus the synagogue building is modestly set back from the street, reflecting an older European tradition. Likewise the building’s height is scaled back to blend in with the adjacent structures.
Our building was designed to be welcoming and easily accessible to pedestrians, for most members lived in the neighborhood and observed the Orthodox tradition of walking to synagogue on the Sabbath and holidays.
Why a Historic Revival Style?
Mishkon Tephilo is one of the few synagogues in the area designed within a historic revival style around the time when modernism began to dominate synagogue architecture in the United States. [This dedication to a waning style may be due in part to the delay caused by World War II. That is, the building seems to have been originally designed in the late 1930s. The basement was dug out and the foundation walls were poured in 1941. But then the war intervened, so construction was halted until 1947. —DS]
The portico and fluted Doric columns reflect the Classical Revival aesthetic, which had been popular among the Sephardic and German “cultural elite” in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Mishkon’s congregants — who came from a later wave of largely Eastern European immigrants — planned a new building in the late 1930s, the revival style expressed their desire to fit in and be accepted. It also resonated with the ideologies of American freedom and democracy so valued by American Jews.*
The portico and fluted Doric columns reflect the Classical Revival aesthetic, which had been popular among the Sephardic and German “cultural elite” in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Mishkon’s congregants — who came from a later wave of largely Eastern European immigrants — planned a new building in the late 1930s, the revival style expressed their desire to fit in and be accepted. It also resonated with the ideologies of American freedom and democracy so valued by American Jews.*
Mishkon’s façade also contained touches of two other revival styles: the pointed arched stained-glass windows suggest Gothic forms, while the wood panel doors with rosettes evoke the Colonial style.
(Synagogue architecture historically adopted the dominant sacred visual vocabulary of the majority culture; therefore significant Jewish religious structures often aesthetically resembled churches.)
* Samuel Gruber, a historian of synagogue architecture, has noted an additional meaning of the Classical Revival style: it consciously referenced the ancient (Roman-era) synagogues that were then being discovered and excavated in Palestine. —DS
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