Obj. ID: 9240
Jewish Architecture Torah Society Synagogue in Panevėžys, Lithuania
The synagogue of the Torah Society is situated northwest of the market square and the shulhoyf. It was built according to a design by Yakov I. Ushakov from 1910. Contemporary documents show that the “prayer school” of the Ḥevra Torah (Torah Society) was to be built on a plot belonging to Zundel Abelsky, between Dvorianskaia and Malinovskaia (today Respublikos and Valančiaus respectively) Streets, and Abram Movshovich Abelsky took care of all the necessary permits. Ushakov’s design shows a building of a square plan with a side length of about 10.50 m, without a women’s section. The interior includes the prayer hall with a square bimah in the center and the Torah ark in a niche in the eastern wall. The unplastered redbrick structure was designed in the so-called “brick style” with a tin gable roof on the north-south axis. The prayer hall was lit by ten pointed windows (one combined with a door). Two stoves were situated by the western wall. The façades, about five meters high, are crowned with a molded cornice with modillions and decorated by corner lesenes.
The eastern façade topped by a gable is subdivided by lesenes, which are decorated with depressed and protruding panels, into three unequal bays. A pair of lesenes frames the central, projecting bay that corresponds to the interior location of the Torah ark and comprises a blind pointed arch, recalling the form of the windows. While the northern pair of windows is preserved, the southern ones were destroyed when a gateway was cut into this part of the wall, but the tops of their pointed arches are still visible. All openings were framed with bands and archivolts; decorative brickwork panels are placed below the window sills. A segment-headed window is pierced into the center of the gable. The northern and the southern façades are framed by plain corner lesenes and show each three openings evenly spaced. The entrance on the southern façade (Valančiaus Street) is now converted into a rectangular window. Above it, a blocked segment-headed window is visible, a departure from Ushakov’s design. This window raises the possibility that a women’s section did exist, despite the plans. Next to the former entrance, two pointed windows are still preserved. Here, as in the other openings, rectangular windows were inserted and the upper parts of the arches were blocked. Decorative brickwork panels are placed below the window sills of the southern façade. The western façade differs significantly from the others. It seems that this side was intended to enable further extension and therefore was not accomplished. Thus, besides the corner lesenes, no architectural decoration seems to have been applied to this façade, and no windows are evident. The lesenes were built correctly in the lower part but were retracted into the surface of the wall in the upper part. In addition, joins are visible in the upper fabric of the brickwork on both sides of the façade. In 2007, two rectangular windows were situated on the southern side, the left one replacing a doorway. The original gable has been replaced with silicate brickwork and planks.
After WW II the synagogue interior was completely changed. An additional floor was inserted and the former prayer hall was subdivided into several rooms. Only the Torah ark niche in the central pier of the eastern wall is preserved. The former synagogue building has served as a shop since 1992, and a memorial plaque was placed on the southern façade noting that this was a Jewish prayer house.
sub-set tree:
Cohen-Mushlin, Aliza, Sergey Kravtsov, Vladimir Levin, Giedrė Mickūnaitė, Jurgita Šiaučiūnaitė-Verbickienė (eds.), Synagogues in Lithuania. A Catalogue, 2 vols. (Vilnius: VIlnius Academy of Art Press, 2010-12)
CJA & Lita documentation;
Marija Rupeikienė, Nykstantis kultūros paveldas: Lietuvos sinagogų architektūra (Vilnius, 2003), p. 135-137, 141