Friday, October 16, 2009

Meet the Author, Meet Our History

pencil sketch of Mikvah Israel Synagoge design by Louis I. Kahn (MoMA collection)


On Tuesday, October 27th, at 5:30 pm author Susan Solomon will be at Labyrinth Books (122 Nassau Street, Princeton) to talk about her new book, “Louis Kahn's Jewish Architecture: Mikveh Israel and the Midcentury American Synagogue.”

Solomon’s earlier book, “Louis Kahn's Trenton Jewish Community Center,” and her ardent advocacy helped to preserve the Trenton Bath House, arguably one of Louis I. Kahn’s most seminal buildings. The Bath House, now on the National and NJ Registers of Historic Places, is located right here in Ewing, NJ. The County of Mercer’s Culture & Heritage Commission and Department of Planning recently launched an informational website on the Trenton Bath House that includes archival photographs, restoration plans, and information on Louis I. Kahn.


Solomon will talk about Kahn’s 1961 plans for the never-built Mikveh Israel synagogue, exploring the transformation of the American synagogue between 1955 and 1970, and looking at how Kahn struggled to “…reconcile his own profoundly spiritual aims for …modern architecture…"(Joseph Siry, Wesleyan University) with his distant relationship to Judaism as a non-practicing man of Estonian Jewish heritage.

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