Slide Title

Newport: Touro Synagogue

Photographer/Creator

Chester Smolski, Rhode Island College
Peter Harrison

Preview

Date

Winter 12-1971

Description

The building, the oldest surviving Synagogue in America, is angled to the street on a rise so that the ark inside faces Jerusalem. Only the elegance of the entrance porch, with arching inside a pedimented Ionic enclosure and the same generous spread of stairs as those for the Vernon House, anticipates the interior. For his design, Harrison borrowed from a two-story galleried hall in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones and Others, and, for details of columns, balustrades, and the ark, from James Gibbs’s Rules of Drawing and Batty Langley’s Treasury of Designs, all books in his personal library.

Notes

Bibliography: Jordy, William H. "Buildings of Rhode Island" Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 542

Rights

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Creator 1 Role

Photographer

Creator 2 Dates

1716-1775

Creator 2 Role

Architect

Subject Headings

Touro Synagogue (Newport, RI); Religious architecture -- Rhode Island -- Newport; Historic buildings – Rhode Island -- Newport;

Country Name

United States

Region Name

Rhode Island

City Name

Newport

Street Address

72 Touro St.

Recommended Citation

Smolski, Chester and Harrison, Peter, "Newport: Touro Synagogue" (1971). Browse All. 163.
https://digitalcommons.ric.edu/smolski_images/163