6 January 2025
The St Kilda Synagogue in Charnwood Grove was completed in 1927, much larger than the first 1872/1904 one across the road, able to seat 1000. It was designed by Joseph Plottel in a suitably exotic stylised Byzantine, with a big low dome (which actually you only see from a distance down the side streets). I was a bit surprised to learn that it was pretty closely inspired by the Isaiah Israel Synagogue in Hyde Park Chicago, completed in 1924. That one is bigger and has much nicer brickwork, but ours is very nice, the gold lettering glinting in the sun. I’ve never been inside, but it looks quite nice too, a big domed space, with encircling balcony, an elaborate slightly horseshoe arch housing the ark, and lots of nice timber work. All the interior shots are from Google maps. As a side note, it shows how the Jewish community in the area had grown to become quite substantial, having been started off by quite wealthy families moving to the area in the 1850s/60s/70s when St Kilda was the suburb of choice for the moneyed classes. By the 1880s Toorak took over and some wealthy families moved there, but the Jewish community stayed on, and I guess grew with the less wealthy choosing nice suburban houses in East St Kilda /Caulfield, or from the dozens of flats in the area. In fact the community grew quite fast, with the Beth Israel synagogue in Alma Road built in 1937, and then after WW2 grew even more, with the other concentration in South Carlton drifting over southside too. b&W State Library, Chicago and interiors from the internet.
Posted this in 2015, a grand slightly exotic place I’d never seen before – the first St Kilda Synagogue. The impressive twin domed towered front was built in 1904, designed by the versatile and prolific Nahum Barnet. The work was funded by Moritz Michaelis, who lived at Linden, the Acland Street mansion that’s now a gallery. Before that, it was in the form of a classical temple, built in 1872, and designed by Crouch & Wilson, who weren’t Jewish and in fact did lots of churches. I couldn’t find any photos, and not sure the classical front was ever completed like that. It was superseded by the much larger current one over the road, which opened in 1927, and then the original one was ‘completely remodeled’ into a hall in 1932, before being sold in 1940; its site at no 17 Charnwood Grove is now a nice Tudor Revival block of flats. The synagogue was sort of slightly out of the way, in a residential street, but then the Jewish community didn’t have land granted like the churches, so I guess when the street was created c1870, the local community thought it was a good central spot to buy, located between all the families, who were spread across St Kilda and what we now call East St Kilda. I had to research newspapers to get all those dates !
Storey of Melbourne 