Percival GoodmanFAIA (January 13, 1904 – October 11, 1989) was an American urban theorist and architect who designed more than 50 synagogues between 1948 and 1983. He has been called the "leading theorist" of modern synagogue design,[1] and "the most prolific architect in Jewish history."[2]
Biography
Percival Goodman was born in New York City to parents who were in the arts business. His father was a leading New York auctioneer who abandoned the family when Percival was young. His brother was the noted writer and sociologist Paul Goodman. At age 14, he became an apprentice for an architect. In 1925, Percival Goodman received the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects Paris Prize which sent him to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, for architectural training.[3]
Goodman called himself "an agnostic who was converted by Hitler", and after World War II he became more interested in Jewish architecture. At a 1947 conference of the Reform Jewish movement, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Goodman advocated the use of modern architecture for new Jewish buildings, rather than following the models of older churches and synagogues. He quickly began to receive commissions. Many of these were for new buildings in suburban areas reachable only by car, and Goodman responded by using a variety of designs intended to attract motorists' attention. In 1949 his proposal was selected for a large Holocaust memorial in Manhattan's Riverside Park, but it was never built.[2] His student Peter Eisenman much later completed a Holocaust memorial in Berlin, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
His design for B'nai Israel in Millburn, New Jersey (1951), has been called "the first truly modern synagogue".[4] Goodman's design for B'nai Israel included sculpture, painting, and ark curtain design by Herbert Ferber, Robert Motherwell, and Adolph Gottlieb, respectively.[5] This integration of modern sculpture and artworks, along with the use of natural light, became hallmarks of Goodman's work.[2] Goodman "stressed the human scale in his prayer halls and collaboration with modern artists where expressive symbolism was warranted", according to Philip Nobel at the New York Times.[1]
Percival Goodman was also considered a distinguished urban theorist. He was the co-author, with his brother Paul, of the landmark urban planning text Communitas, and he illustrated editions of a number of his brother's other works. Percival Goodman was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He was a professor at the Columbia University architecture school for more than 25 years, where notable students included Peter Eisenman and Wang Chiu-Hwa. In 2001, Columbia exhibited a retrospective of his works at its Wallach Gallery.[6]
Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life, with Paul Goodman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947); revised 2nd edition (New York: Vintage Books, 1960); revised 3rd edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990)
