Yeshiva College and the Pursuit of a Jewish Architecture

In the 1920’s, New York City saw the culmination of a great Jewish building boom. Between the end of the Great War and the onset of the Great Depression, elaborate and impressive synagogues, temples, and educational institutions were built by the entire range of the city’s prominent Jewish factions. The members of the oldest Reform congregation in Manhattan, Temple Emanu-El, raised a colossal Romanesque house of worship on Fifth Avenue in 1929.¹ The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA), which would serve as the flagship institution for Conservative Judaism, opened the doors to its grand Georgian Morningside Heights building in 1930.² And while these two institutions decided upon established aesthetic styles for their buildings, the fledgling Orthodox Yeshiva College chose a striking and innovative combination of traditional and modern styles for the first structure of its Washington Heights campus in 1928.³ As is apparent from promotional documents aimed at potential donors, public statements from the schools founders, and comparisons with other buildings constructed by the school’s architects, the appearance of the Yeshiva College campus served as a physical embodiment of the school’s mission. At a time when American Jews struggled to find an appropriate and fitting architectural aesthetic for their various structures, Yeshiva’s founders chose to erect an edifice that boldly proclaimed pride in their ideology of teaching secular and sacred Jewish studies under one roof. In the battle to retain a strong modern Orthodox population, the founders of Yeshiva sought to impress American Jewry with a grand and original Jewish aesthetic that simultaneously emphasized their commitment to Jewish tradition and progress.

The Origins of Yeshiva College

Yeshiva sprang from the combination of two of the earliest Orthodox educational institutions in America: Etz Chaim and the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS).⁴ Founded by Eastern European immigrants on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1886, Etz Chaim served as the first full-time Jewish school in the country. The students spent the bulk of their day in traditional study of the Talmud and Jewish law. In the late afternoons, the school administration hesitantly sanctioned the teaching of state-mandated secular courses, but Jonathan D. Sarna points out that Etz Chaim “resisted modernity as much as possible.”⁵ A decade after Etz Chaim entered the scene, the Orthodox eastern European Jews of the Lower East Side founded RIETS, America’s first yeshiva (institute for the advanced study of Talmud), where high school graduates could continue their traditional Jewish studies.

Many of the students at RIETS desired pastoral training and secular studies as supplements to their Talmudic learning, but the yeshiva’s higher-ups frowned upon such pursuits. The restrictive atmosphere caused some of the students to transfer to JTS, especially after noted Cambridge scholar Solomon Schechter took control of the Seminary in 1902. While the Seminary could not boast a strength in traditional Talmud study as RIETS could, it offered the combination of rabbinical training and academic Jewish studies that many found attractive.⁶

While the students and administration clashed over the nature of the education at RIETS, the Orthodox community felt overburdened by its support of two educational institutions. In 1915, Etz Chaim and RIETS merged under the new umbrella organization known as the Rabbinical College of America and thus streamlining their expenses. Both schools retained their original names and purposes, but shared expenses while the high school served as a feeder of students and funds for the rabbinic ordination program of RIETS.⁷ Prominent New York builder Harry Fischel, the new vice president of the institution, chaired the building committee for the Rabbinical College’s new home at 9–11 Montgomery Street on the Lower East Side.

Fischel, who possessed a strong interest in architecture, had struck it rich as an investor in real estate.⁸ Just a few years prior to his involvement in RIETS, he held the presidency of the Uptown Talmud Torah, a modernized Orthodox supplementary school. Fischel’s push for modernization, such as placing a piano in the Talmud Torah’s sanctuary and showing motion pictures at...