Plum Street Temple

PLUM STREET TEMPLE

Prior to the Civil War, K. K. B’nai Yeshurun (Isaac M. Wise Temple) was gaining national prominence thanks to its rabbi, Isaac Mayer Wise. With his energy and vision, Cincinnati was quickly becoming a center of national Jewish life. The 200 families of the temple envisioned a magnificent building to house their growing twenty-year-old congregation. They purchased a lot on the corner of Eighth and Plum Streets for the sum of $35,000. Construction was anticipated to cost $55,000, but the delays and inflation caused by the Civil War meant that the building was actually erected in 1866 at a cost of $263,525. Today, the Wise Temple Archive Library holds the original ledger book with all construction costs for Plum Street Temple.

Designed by James Keys Wilson, a prominent American architect and the first president of the Cincinnati Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the building reflects the Byzantine-Moorish synagogue architectural style that first emerged in Germany during the nineteenth century. It hearkens to the Golden Age of Spain in Jewish history, and reflects Rabbi Wise’s optimism that the developing American Jewish experience would be the next Golden Age. All other examples of such architecture in Germany were later destroyed by Hitler, and only one synagogue of a similar style exists in America (in New York). The complex design of Plum Street Temple mirrors many cultures: the tall proportions, three-pointed arched entrances and rose window suggest a Gothic revival church; the crowning minarets hint of Islamic architecture; the motifs decorating the entrances, repeated in the rose window and on the Torah Ark, introduce a Moorish theme; the 14 bands of Hebrew texts surrounding the interior were selected by Rabbi Wise and were chosen primarily from the Book of Psalms.