Leopold Eidlitz: America’s First Jewish Architect

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The United States became a modern industrial nation during the so-called “Gilded Age”. From 1865 onwards, the immigrant population in American cities exploded. The need for industrial workers fueled the rise of cities like New York, Chicago and Boston. Workers and their bosses had to live and work somewhere. To meet the demands, an American school of architects began designing skyscrapers, churches and other buildings that reflected a specific American identity.

The Gilded Age also saw the rise and fall of Leopold Eidlitz, the first Jewish architect in the United States and a founder of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Eidlitz was the first American architect to define a modern organic architecture says University of Texas at Arlington Architectural History instructor Kathryn E. Holliday. The author of “Leopold Eidlitz: Architecture and Idealism in the Gilded Age” (Norton), Holliday says Eidlitz was the first architect to define a modern organic architecture. But when cracks began appearing in the structure of his crowning architectural achievement, his career crashed and burned. Eidlitz ended up a largely forgotten figure in American architecture. Eidlitz deserves better says Holliday.

Born in Prague and educated in Vienna, Eidlitz came to United States in 1843 at age 20. In 1846, after serving an internship, he began practicing architecture in New York City. With a German philosophical background, Eidlitz became influenced by the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalism

“Eidlitz was raised Jewish and when he first comes here, it seems like he had this idea that being Jewish was limiting,” said Holliday. “So he adopted this persona of the rising class of people who considered themselves Americans. Transcendentalism was a way to create an American culture and he tied himself into that.

“At the same time he’s working on St. George’s Episcopal Church, Eidlitz is also working on Shaaray Tefila Synagogue. I imagine the synagogue hired him because he was Jewish. They called him a brother Israelite and felt a sense of solidarity with their architect. We have only one existing engraving of the building, which he designed in a Byzantine-Moorish style.”

In Germany, non-Jewish architects assigned this “Moorish” style to synagogue architecture. They didn’t want to use Christian styles like Gothic or Romanesque in their synagogue commissions. They believed Gothic or Romanesque historical styles to be the proper church architecture. In the U.S., synagogue congregants chose the Moorish style for themselves.

“That’s what they wanted,” said Holliday. “When they wanted their synagogue to make this big statement, they don’t want any confusion with church architecture. Thus the Moorish style immediately announced: this is a synagogue! And it was an announcement of the success and prosperity of the congregation. That was exactly the point that both the congregation and Eidlitz wanted. Eidlitz would have loved to make a big statement. He received a lot of press for his synagogue commissions. People came from all over to attend services so they could see the interior of his buildings.”

In 1858, Eidlitz wrote an essay on Christian Architecture that he presented to the AIA. It was his fullest statement on religion and architecture. A church or synagogue, no matter what religion the building represented, should impart a transcendent, sublime experience that somehow embodied the notion of G-d inherent in that religion, wrote Eidlitz.

“He’s clearly not a practicing Jew anymore,” said Holliday, “but he doesn’t belong to any church either. He thinks what religions have in common is more important than what they don’t share.  For him, religions shared an idea of G-d. His approach was to express the greatness of this divine power, no matter what the specifics of the religion. So he wasn’t warm to the idea that a church, for example, should serve a liturgical purpose.”

Eidlitz’s commission for Temple Emanu-El in 1866 gave him the opportunity to design the largest and most prosperous Reform synagogue in New York City.

“Eidlitz was quite successful at this point,” said Holliday. “This was a huge commission at prominent site (Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street). Clearly the architect’s purpose is to create a building that makes a huge statement.”

The exterior of the synagogue was a Gothic structure topped by two 170-foot high “Moorish” minaret-like towers. But it was the interior, described as a “tour de force of color and ornament” that was most striking. Eidlitz used only primary colors. The ceiling panels were painted a dark blue and embellished with gold stars. The arches and walls were painted yellow, blue, red, black and white. The Moorish theme produced a series of arches that spanned the synagogue, from the rear to the front bimah. The undersides of the arches were painted with complex geometric patterns and carved with geometric ornamental flowering vines.

“The surfaces are covered in patterns,” said Holliday. “It was a highly ornamental interior. There’s a liturgical argument that with all this gilded stuff around you, one does not pay attention to the abstract and the spiritual. One is paying attention to the material. That’s absolutely not true.  In many religious traditions, patterns and ornaments are themselves to be studied to produce transcendent experiences. What Eidlitz understood about ornaments and light was that they could evoke a mood that could not ordinarily be experienced. Ornament was a compliment to the religious service, not a competition.”

Interestingly, by the time Temple Emanu-El was torn down in 1923, most of the congregation hated the interior. They felt it was outdated.

“They felt it to be gaudy and in poor taste. It is absolutely gaudy and I think it’s wonderful,” said Holliday.

Eidlitz’s structure was replaced by a sedate Romanesque building in keeping with the dignified aesthetic of the congregation. So much for transcendent spirituality in Jewish architecture!

Eidlitz began designing his structures, especially the interiors, to use more color, pattern and ornament. This clashed with the modernist approach in styles like cast iron architecture that was beginning to emerge in New York. But Eidlitz’s downfall came when he took on the New York State Capitol commission in 1876. Eidlitz, Frederick Olmstead and Henry Richardson were hired as an advisory board to address budget overruns, delays and concern over the original design of the building. The trio submitted a new design for the structure that included, most controversially, an Eidlitz design for a Gothic dome.

“Eidlitz was already a focus of controversy,” said Holliday. “He was called ‘a conspicuous German’. I haven’t found any clear statement of racial issues but one critic issued a statement condemning Eidlitz’s ‘mongrel architecture’. That seems to me to be a loaded statement. You can read it as innocuous, that is, referring to a mixing of architectural styles. Or you can read it as pejorative. All of the negative connotations of a mongrel are intended. In the 1870s, there weren’t many Jewish architects in the U.S. Remember there aren’t that many architects of any kind in the U.S. at that time although there were Jewish builders.”

In 1880, one year after the opening of the first completed portions of the interior, cracks developed in the vault of the Assembly Chamber. The New York chapter of AIA attacked Eidlitz. Most of the professional architects in New York lined up against Eidlitz. His reputation seriously tarnished, Eidlitz’s advocacy of color and ornament was also discredited. Eidlitz was relegated to the desert of American architectural history.

Holliday says that Eidlitz’s legacy can largely be found in his voluminous writings.

“The crux of his philosophy was that he did not want to depend on historical style to make buildings for this new America,” said Holliday. “When we look at photos of his buildings, they look historical to us. After the modern movement, when ornament is stripped off everything, it’s difficult to look back at buildings that have columns and capitals and pointed arches and rib vaults. It’s difficult to see them as anything but historical because they have these motifs.

“Eidlitz didn’t think they were historical. For example, the New York State Capitol doesn’t look like anything else. It has one giant vault in the center. It has these incredibly abstract painted patterns on the surfaces of the vault. It uses space in a way that is very different than what you would find in Gothic precedents and it does so to create an assembly chamber. So he’s creating a building to suit this new political institution that he admires. To us it looks like a Gothic revival building. But to him, it doesn’t appear Gothic at all through his 19th century eyes.”

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