SUSAN G. SOLOMON is the author of American Playgrounds: Revitalizing Community Space. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
"[P]ioneering and noteworthy . . . Solomon provides well-written
narratives about the history, aspirations, and politics of Jewish
congregations and community centers that worked with the master
architect."--CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly
"Important and insightful."--Jewish Exponent
"Kahn is finally situated in the Philadelphia where he actually
lived and that shaped his work as an exponent of the
nineteenth-century industrial culture in which form had meaning."
--The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography"
"Louis I. Kahn's Jewish Architecture is hardly a mere tale of an
unbuilt design. Solomon deftly uses the case of Mikveh Israel to
reflect on the history of early postwar American synagogue
architecture more broadly and on its significance for postwar
American Jewish social aspirations. Solomon convincingly describes
how American Jewish congregations (mostly Reform and Conservative)
swiftly embraced modernist synagogue design in the years after
1945. She discusses the work of such well-known architects as Frank
Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson, as well as lesser-known figures,
such as Pietro Belluschi and William Wurster, praising their
designs as innovative in conception (especially their interior use
of modern decorative art) and inspiring in effect." --The
Forward
"The book's main argument is succinct and clear, aided by the
numerous pictures throughout all chapters. Those include not only
Kahn's drawings and completed works, but also the exterior and
interior designs of synagogues and other buildings by a host of
architects from the nineteenth century to the present."--H-Net
"Valuable . . . Solomon presents a careful and very readable study
of those designs, clearly connecting the congregation's religious
and communal needs with Kahn's evolving vision. She demonstrates
where Kahn's concepts of site, space, light, landscape, and ritual
continued to develop, often outpacing the congregation's own ideas.
In this, the book is an introduction to Kahn the architect and the
idealist. Solomon also offers lengthy and informative excursions
into post-World War II views of Jewish identity and community, and
of the lively professional and public debate about the appropriate
art and architecture for synagogues, and in a postscript muses on
the state of contemporary synagogue design." --Tablet Magazine
"Important and insightful." Jewish Exponent"
[P]ioneering and noteworthy . . . Solomon provides well-written
narratives about the history, aspirations, and politics of Jewish
congregations and community centers that worked with the master
architect. CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly"
Kahn is finally situated in the Philadelphia where he actually
lived and that shaped his work as an exponent of the
nineteenth-century industrial culture in which form had meaning."
The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography "
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