Former vul. Bohdaniwska – Ohel Yesharim community synagogue
The synagogue of the Jewish community Ohel Yescharim ( "The Tent of the Fair") was built in 1901 in Lviv's neighborhood called Bohdanivka (pol. Bogdanówka) located on Bogdanowska, a side street branching from vul. Horodotska and not existing today. It was a distinctive architectural structure in the Neo-Classicist style, which was destroyed by the Nazis during the Shoah.
Architecture
The building was erected in the Historicist style combining Neo-Romanesque and Neo-Classicist elements in its architecture. The synagogue consisted of a large rectangular block (20.60 x 13.20 m) of the prayer hall with a women’s gallery over the vestibule (pulish), which was covered with a high fractured roof, and a smaller synagogal block (12.20 x 6.0 m) with the women’s prayer room, adjacent from the south and covered with a lower roof. The roofs were lit through lucarnes. The synagogue was oriented traditionally and had two typical separate entrances leading to the men’s prayer hall and to the women’s prayer room. The building was notable for its architectural design and large semicircular windows as well as round ones emphasizing its sacred purpose. The windows had Romanesque fillings. The main façade was decorated with banded rustication and topped with a cornice having a Romanesque arcature frieze. The main entrance was accentuated by a false Neo-Classicist portico in the shape of two pilasters with Corinthian capitals supporting a triangular pediment with the shield of David in the tympanum. The pilasters were a replica of traditional symbolic columns at the entrance to the Jewish Temple: the right one, Jachin, or "God will establish", and the left one, Boaz, or "In Him strength".
The spacious prayer hall (area 12.50 x 11.70 m; height 7.55 m) was lit by four large windows in the south and east walls and a round one above the Aron haKodesh on the east wall axis. The women’s galleries were connected with the main hall by large semicircular arches (the west gallery by three arches, and the south gallery by one), decorated with profiled archivolts and havingh metal fences. The spaces between the arches were decorated with pilasters having capitals. The Bimah was located in the middle of the virtually square hall; unfortunately, its appearance is not known.
Personalities
Sources
2. DALO 110/1/64 "Spysok Lvivskykh synagog 1857 roku" (A list of Lviv synagogues in 1857)