09 September 2014

Imaging - Religious Architecture

The Los Angeles Conservancy website has a nice piece on a local and historical structure that caught my eye many years ago when my wife waitressed at the nearby Sizzler Restaurant that's still open on the southeast corner of 4th and Vermont. Eventually, I walked through the neighborhood and got a nice set of images that included the following:
Joohyang Presbyterian Church - Los Angeles / Jim A. Beardsley (c) 2012

The history-relaxed text from the above-inserted link reads:

"Korean Philadelphia Presbyterian Church; 1926; 407 S. New Hampshire Avenue; Los Angeles, CA.

Located north of Wilshire on New Hampshire Avenue, this Romanesque-style building with Byzantine and Moorish elements was built as a synagogue for Los Angeles' oldest Conservative Jewish congregation.

Architect S. Tilden Norton had built the congregation's previous temple downtown (where they had resided for fifteen years), as well as contributing to the designs for the nearby Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

The grand arch on the front of the building is in low-relief yet highly ornamental, offering a dominant focal point for the simple massing of the building.

The interior is dramatically illuminated by a large oculus (or circular skylight) in the dome. It was a filming location for 1927's The Jazz Singer.

Following the westward migration of Los Angeles' Jewish population, the Temple Sinai moved into a new building in Westwood in 1961. The Temple Sinai East, as the Wilshire Center building then became known, was sold more than a decade later. It now serves as the Korean Philadelphia Presbyterian Church."



Sinai Temple - Westwood (Los Angeles, California) / Jim A. Beardsley (c) 2013

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