Beth Sholom Synagogue

It didn’t take very long for Jews to be upwardly mobile enough to move from the crowded tenements to better housing and by the end of World War II decamp for the suburbs. The second generation of American Jews really wanted to be American and embrace their new country. In Philadelphia Rabbi Mortimer Cohen of Congregation Beth Sholem wrote a letter to Frank Lloyd Wright on November 16, 1953 inviting him to design a synagogue.  A few weeks later he accepted the commission and constructed what he termed “a modern version of Mount Sinai” that would express a new American Architecture.   It was his last building opening 5 months after he died.  The column free synagogue seats 1030 people; the roof hangs from a 170-ton steel tripod frame. It was made of sanded translucent white glass and corrugated wire glass which a little ahead of its time so that “Since this is to be God’s Temple, I prefer to have him color the glass.” Sadly it still leaks.