File:St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church - fmr Temple Beth El - Tonawanda, New York - 20221114.jpg

Original file(4,032 × 2,268 pixels, file size: 1.99 MB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Summary

Description
English: St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church, 2368 Eggert Road, Tonawanda, New York, November 2022. Dedicated in January 1961, this was the last major work of Buffalo-based architect Louis Greenstein, and a fine demonstration of his late-career skill in balancing an embrace of the austere sleekness of the International Style with subtle hints of the Classicist tropes that he'd favored earlier in his career: note the arcade of pillar-supported segmental arches that fronts the south side of the façade, to the right of the entrance, as well as the cornice and parapet lining the flat roof to the left. The rough fieldstone veneer on the furthest-right face of the building affords an interesting contrast in color and texture, as well. As the viewer may have guessed from the stone Star of David engraving that underlies the cross to the left of the entrance, the building originally housed a synagogue: Temple Beth El, the oldest in Western New York, whose history traces back to 1847, only 12 years after the arrival of its first Jewish settler, one L. H. Flersheim. From humble beginnings, Beth El's growth was rapid: within three years they had established a Jewish cemetery and school as well as cut the ribbon on their first purpose-built synagogue, on Pearl Street at the present site of the Main Place Mall. The congregation bounced around a series of locations in Buffalo over the ensuing century, leaving the increasingly congested downtown area in 1874 in favor of a Near East Side location, and finally Richmond Avenue in 1911. The post-World War II mass exodus of middle-class families from Buffalo to its surrounding suburbs affected the local Jewish community equally as much as any other; however, the temple's shift out of the city was rather gradual: it was in 1957 when Beth El purchased the land on which this property sits, yet when their building plans were unveiled two years later, the new campus was intended only as a suburban branch location of the Hebrew school. Nonetheless, after the construction of a series of substantial additions, it was reinaugurated in 1966 as the new home of the temple itself. The building continued as such for the remainder of the 20th century and into the beginning of the 21st, also welcoming the members of Temples Shaarey Zedek and Beth Israel and Congregation B'nai Shalom after the mergers of 2008, 2011, and 2017, respectively. However, the end of the line came in 2018, when what was by now called Temple Beth Tzedek moved to B'nai Shalom's former home in the neighboring town of Amherst. Thereupon, they sold their former synagogue to St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church, which had previously met on Brighton Road in what's now the Episcopal Diocese Ministry Center.
Date
Source Own work
Author Andre Carrotflower
Camera location42° 58′ 56.06″ N, 78° 49′ 44.16″ W  Heading=113.23220258003° Kartographer map based on OpenStreetMap.View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMapinfo

Licensing

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:
w:en:Creative Commons
attribution share alike
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
You are free:
  • to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
  • attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
  • share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.

Captions

Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents

Items portrayed in this file

depicts

14 November 2022

42°58'56.060"N, 78°49'44.159"W

heading: 113.23220258002867 degree

0.00262467191601049868 second

1.54 millimetre

image/jpeg

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current07:45, 17 November 2022Thumbnail for version as of 07:45, 17 November 20224,032 × 2,268 (1.99 MB)Andre CarrotflowerUploaded own work with UploadWizard
The following pages on the English Wikipedia use this file (pages on other projects are not listed):

Global file usage

The following other wikis use this file:

Metadata