The new upper West Side Synagogue of the First Hungarian Congregation Ohab Zedek, one of the oldest Orthodox Jewish Congregations in New York, erected on West Ninety-fifth Street, near Amsterdam Avenue is completed. The first services will be held at midnight, September 4th, when the building will be formally opened.
The synagogue is the first step in the plan for the construction of an educational and communal center to honor the late Dr. Philip Klein, for thirty-six years Rabbi of the Congregation. The group of buildings, begun during Dr. Klein’s life, will be completed as a memorial to him.
The architecture of the synagogue is a blending of Byzantine and Romanesque. The facade is of the Briar Hill sandstone superimposed on a base of granite and the interior decorations are of ornamental tracery in Byzantine and Romanesque patterns done in low relief. The Ark is entirely of marble. A feature of the building, never before attempted in a synagogue and unique in the structures of this city, is the lighting which is entirely concealed and the principal source of which is a huge art-glass dome, 28 feet in diameter. The auditorium accommodates, with its gallery for the women of the congregation, a total of 800 persons. Women of the Congregation have equipped a room in which the Sisterhood will meet and known as the Julie Hirsch Klein room, as a memorial to the late Mrs. Philip Klein.
The new structure will not supplant the older edifice of the Congregation at 18 West 116th Street, where services will continue to be held. Rabbi Isaiah Levy is rabbi and Moritz Neumann, president of the Congregation.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
