Obj. ID: 8840
Jewish Architecture Synagogue at 11 Šaltupio St. in Anykščiai, Lithuania
The building of the synagogue is on the other side of straight and rather wide Šaltupio Street bordering the former shulhoyf in the
east. The former synagogue is the major construction on the eastern side of the street and dominates the environment.
This brick synagogue, whose historical name is unknown, consisted of two tiers in the western parts, and had an interior staircase. Judging from the inventory plan from 1949, the prayer hall was located on the eastern side; it could be reached through a door in the middle of the northern façade and, probably, from the west, through the vestibule. Another door was located on the left side of the southern façade and probably led to the staircase and the women’s section on the first floor. The western façade facing Šaltupio Street was symmetrical, with a portal in the central part, which could be reached by a bifurcated exterior staircase. On each side of the portal, two windows were arranged in two tiers. The eastern façade had a symmetrical composition as well: two pairs of high windows flanked the widest central pier, on which the Torah ark was located. The northern and the southern façades were partly composed of two floors. The lesenes emphasize the building’s corners and the western portal is surrounded with a flat molding.
When surveyed in 2007, the building was divided into two levels, plastered, and covered with a hipped roof of asbestos sheets. It contained offices and two garages, but retained the former synagogue’s original ground plan contour with the corner lesenes and the
portals in the western and southern façades.
sub-set tree:
CJA & Lita documentation;
Pinkas hakehilot: Lita, ed. Dov Levin (Jerusalem, 1996) p. 154;
Rossiiskaia evreiskaia entsiklopediia (Moscow), vol. 4 - 2000, p. 47;
Y.D.Kamzon, Yahadut lita: tmunot vetziyunim (Jerusalem, 1959), ill. on p. 101 (interior), YV 10224 (1926);
www.zydai.lt/lt/content/viewitem/618/; ills. in ww.zydai.lt/lt/content/viewitem/689/;
Dovid Katz, Lithuanian Jewish Culture (Vilnius: Baltos Lankos, 2004), ill. on p. 167;
David Matityahu Lipman, Le-toldot ha-yehudim be-kovna u-slobodka (Keidan, 1931), p. 70;
Niunkaitė-Račiūnnienė, Aistė, Lietuvos žydų tradicinio meno ir simbolių pasaulis: Atvaizdai, vaizdiniai ir tekstai (Vilnius, 2011), iil. 3, 4