Obj. ID: 9250
Jewish Architecture  Beit Midrash in Skaudvilė, Lithuania

The beit midrash was built at the end of the 19th century. According to the pre-WW I photograph, the 1916 panorama of the town and V. Ramanauskas’ photograph from 1936, the rectangular beit midrash was built of brick on a rather high socle, with an eastern prayer hall and western two-storey part. The structure was plastered and covered with a roof of wooden shingles. The façades were crowned with a molded cornice; pilasters marked the building’s corners and emphasized the division into two parts. The prayer hall was lit by sixteen round-headed windows. The two-storey western façade was symmetrical and crowned with a gable. A central broad doorway was flanked by a pair of narrow rectangular windows, which probably lit the vestibule. Two broader ones on either side pierced the lower tier of the façade. The first-floor fenestration repeated the scheme of the ground floor, replacing the doorway with a broad tripartite window, and the narrow windows with niches including some decoration. The gable was pierced with a central tripartite window flanked by a pair of small rectangular windows. A plaster Star of David was located at the apex of the gable. A comparison between the photograph from the early 20th century, the postcard from 1916, and the photograph from 1936, shows that the western part of the synagogue underwent changes before 1916. The building was apparently expanded westwards, so that the western part of the southern façade acquired an additional, third window, similar to the other windows of the two-storey section. The new western portion of the roof (brighter in the images from 1916 and 1936) was half-hipped, changing the western gable into a trapezoid. The eastern part of the southern façade remained the same, with the five tall round-headed windows of the prayer hall. The eastern façade was symmetrical and crowned with a triangular gable. The central pier, marked by a niche with a semicircular opening above it, corresponded to the interior location of the Torah ark. Three tall round-headed windows were placed on each side of the central pier. The gable contained a group of three rectangular windows in the middle, flanked by a small semicircular window on each side, and an oculus above.

After WW II the beit midrash was transformed into an apartment house. In 2007 it was a two-storey building of rectangular plan, covered with a hipped roof of asbestos sheets. The structure was considerably reconstructed: the façades and the roof shape were changed, and the gables were removed. The pilasters were turned into lesenes, and the molded cornice simplified. The round-headed windows of the prayer hall are still discernible under the plaster.