The Greenbank Drive Synagogue was built in 1936/7 and is the work of the notable Liverpool architect Sir Ernest Alfred Shennan. Most of his other work is also in Merseyside and comprises a diversity of building types. His inter-war designs included Westminster Banks; five cinemas including the listed Forum Cinema on Lime Street, Liverpool; restaurant interiors (The French Café and Arabic Café, both 1933, Liverpool); dance halls (The Grafton Rooms, Liverpool, 1934); hotels and office blocks. Greenbank Drive is Shennan’s only synagogue and is very different to the rest of his oeuvre up to that time which, apart from the banks, was distinctive art deco.
The Synagogue has a re-inforced concrete and steel frame structure, with the external walls faced in ‘golden brown’ hand cut bricks. There is a grand approach to the west front entrance up two flights of shallow steps, with curved concrete balustrades. The west front has a three bay projecting entrance, with three semi-circular headed double curved brick arches supported on circular brick piers.
A cantilevered gallery is wrapped around three sides (open at the east end) in a graceful elliptical curve. The spectacular and innovatory ceiling configuration has a barrel curve between the north and south sides of the building springing from above continuous canopies of intersecting segmented concrete arches which run west-east above the upper range of windows on each side of the building. There is a clerestory of semi circular lunettes, each set within and framed by a segmented curve of the concrete canopy above. This concrete canopy is understood to be the very first use of this architectural form in Great Britain.
Greenbank Drive Synagogue is architecturally by far the most important and innovatory 20th century synagogue in England and is the finest surviving synagogue in Europe dating from the inter-war period. It also has important socio-historic significance as representing a last late optimistic cultural expression of European Jewry before the holocaust.
Despite the Grade II* listing, this building remained at risk as the synagogue closed in January 2008 and conversion of the building into housing association flats was proposed. This scheme had it gone ahead would have destroyed the uniquely important interior.
English Heritage has provided £51,000 in grants with the council also giving £20,000. A significant share of the money will be used to repair the roof and make it weather-proof once again.
Discussions as to what use will be found for the building are ongoing.
Thanks for looking
The Synagogue has a re-inforced concrete and steel frame structure, with the external walls faced in ‘golden brown’ hand cut bricks. There is a grand approach to the west front entrance up two flights of shallow steps, with curved concrete balustrades. The west front has a three bay projecting entrance, with three semi-circular headed double curved brick arches supported on circular brick piers.
A cantilevered gallery is wrapped around three sides (open at the east end) in a graceful elliptical curve. The spectacular and innovatory ceiling configuration has a barrel curve between the north and south sides of the building springing from above continuous canopies of intersecting segmented concrete arches which run west-east above the upper range of windows on each side of the building. There is a clerestory of semi circular lunettes, each set within and framed by a segmented curve of the concrete canopy above. This concrete canopy is understood to be the very first use of this architectural form in Great Britain.
Greenbank Drive Synagogue is architecturally by far the most important and innovatory 20th century synagogue in England and is the finest surviving synagogue in Europe dating from the inter-war period. It also has important socio-historic significance as representing a last late optimistic cultural expression of European Jewry before the holocaust.
Despite the Grade II* listing, this building remained at risk as the synagogue closed in January 2008 and conversion of the building into housing association flats was proposed. This scheme had it gone ahead would have destroyed the uniquely important interior.
English Heritage has provided £51,000 in grants with the council also giving £20,000. A significant share of the money will be used to repair the roof and make it weather-proof once again.
Discussions as to what use will be found for the building are ongoing.
Thanks for looking
