Obj. ID: 9246
Jewish Architecture Beit Midrash in Prienai, Lithuania
The building of the beit midrash dates back to 1903. Today, it is a plastered brick two-storey building covered with hipped roof of asbestos sheets. It seems that the horizontal stringcourse on the eastern, southern, and northern façades indicates the original height of the building, and that the upper floor was added after WW II. The corners of the building are accentuated by lesenes, and one lesene divides the northern and southern façades into two bays. Only the eastern façade retains remnants of the original structure. In its center, a protrusion decorated by a roundheaded niche marks the former interior placement of the Torah ark. Currently a doorway is cut through this niche. The protrusion was flanked by two pairs of round-headed windows, decorated with narrow pilasters; their sills are still connected by a stringcourse. Currently the windows are rectangular (two of them are bricked up), but the contours of the original arches are discernible. Rectangular recessed fields are situated below the windows. The northern and southern façades have four rectangular openings in both tiers, some of them blocked and some with a balcony in front of them. The current windows of the ground floor are probably reflecting the original ones. The western side of the building was completely reconstructed during the Soviet period.
The interior of the beit midrash has been destroyed.
In 2006 the building housed apartments and offices.
Text from Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, Sergey Kravtsov, Vladimir Levin, Giedrė Mickūnaitė and Jurgita Šiaučiūnaitė-Verbickienė (eds.), Synagogues in Lithuania: A Catalogue. vol. 2 (Vilnius: Vilnius Academy of Art Press, 2012).
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. 146;
Pinkas hakehilot: Lita, ed. Dov Levin (Jerusalem, 1996), p. 503-4;
Maria Łodyńska-Kosińska, Katalog rysunków architektonicznych z akt centralnych władz wyznaniowych w Archiwum Głównym Akt Dawnych w Warszawe (Warsaw, 1981) [Courtesy of Tadeusz Zadrozny], p. 113, no. 283;
Hamelits, no. 5, 10[22].2.1881, p. 123;
Marija Rupeikienė, Nykstantis kultūros paveldas: Lietuvos sinagogų architektūra (Vilnius, 2003), p. 102