Photos courtesy of Charles K. Bill; Turner Construction Co.; HHPA; Chris Lovi; Bernstein Associates

August 28, 1998: Congregation member Daniel Z. Nelson was celebrating his 43rd wedding anniversary with his family at his home in Amagansett, New York, when he learned that Manhattan's Central Synagogue was in flames. He sobbed out loud as he watched the blaze on television, his family's memories crumbling before his eyes. Livia Thompson, executive director of the synagogue, was preparing to celebrate her birthday in Brooklyn when she was called; she still remembers the oily, sickening smell of smoke that engulfed her as she emerged from the subway at 53rd and Lexington into a surreal evening scene. Peter Rubinstein, the congregation's senior rabbi, was in his office at the community center on East 55th Street, across the street from the sanctuary, when a construction worker informed him that the building had caught fire. Together with the worker, Rabbi Rubinstein entered the burning building, took a hammer, and shattered a glass display case in the lobby that held a Torah.It was a special scroll, pieced together from parchment fragments of Torahsburnt or destroyed during the Holocaust. When he emerged, sacred scroll on his shoulder, onto the street, his mind was flooded with vestigial visions of rabbis fleeing burning synagogues in Eastern Europe. He thought, for a second, that he and his congregation had lost their place of worship.

"But I realized that this was different," Rabbi Rubinstein recalls. "In Europe, when the rabbis emerged from the burning synagogues carrying their Torahs, they were met with jeers and catcalls from the crowd. In our case, we were supported by the entire city, the neighborhood, the mayor, the firefighters, fellow clergy. All of them felt the trauma that this sanctuary, which belonged to all of us, had been damaged. They shared our sense of loss. And in that moment, I realized that we were not going to lose our building."

It is late June, 2000, almost two years since fire destroyed Central Synagogue's roof, choir loft, organ, and sanctuary, sparing only the black-walnut two-and-a-half-story ark, most of the bema, and several wooden pews. Right now, more than seven months from completion, the building is little more than a stripped open-brick and wooden shell. It's hard to picture the ornate, encaustic tiled floor, the opulent decorative plasterwork, and the elaborate wall stencils that once animated this sanctuary. It's difficult to imagine that the space will ever house worshippers again. Yet the 140-foot by 99-foot structure is indeed alive, pulsing with the orange-blue flares of welders' torches and the hopeful sounds of hammers and power drills. Above, in the cleristory level, brand-new wooden rafters frame the new ceiling and wall spaces. Below, between the metal support beams of the sanctuary floor, down beneath the lower level, a backhoe methodically excavates two large spaces that will eventually serve a variety of temple functions. It's still hard to envision the synagogue completed. But it's not hard to believe it will be. "They say they don't build them like they used to," says Hugh Hardy, striding onto the second-floor gallery. In his dark blue suit, gesturing about the site with a rolled New York Times in his hand, he looks like a ringmaster wielding a white-topped cane. "But we do. And we will." Hardy, partner in charge at Hardy, Holzman, Pfeiffer Associates (HHPA), was selected by the Central Synagogue building committee to execute the restoration. The committeewas particularly impressed with Hardy's theory of interpretive restoration a subjective approach to architectural restoration that seeks to reconcile the soul of an historic building with the realities of contemporary design, function, and building codes. Hardy had recently put his theory into practice in Times Square at the New Amsterdam Theatre, and at Radio City Music Hall, with spectacular results. "It's not possible to do a perfect historical restoration," he says, his arms spreading, symmetrically, as if he were about to pirouette on the third-row stair of the gallery. "This synagogue is a national historic landmark. But it's also an incredibly personal structure for each of the 1400 families of the congregation. Each with their own idea ofwhat the building's history was, and what that history should look like."

The search for the soul of a structure is not necessarily the same as the quest for its original state. In the latter, the historian or designer sifts through archive drawings, photographs, eyewitness accounts, and whatever original material remains in an attempt to recreate every brick and board and brushstroke. The soul of a building is more elusive, evolving and morphingover time, while still remaining within the aesthetic and spiritual confines of its original design. It is this soul more than a rigid historical reconstruction that the Hardy, Holzman, Pfeiffer team was asked to seek. "It was our understanding that they could redesign our synagogue in such a fashion that when our congregation returned to our building, they would feel thatthis is the sanctuary that they had prayed in for all these years," says Nelson, a real estate developer and a member of Central Synagogue's building and restoration committees. "We asked them for a representation of something that already existed and not for something new; for the building we knew andloved."

The building known as Central Synagogue was consecrated as the home of New York's Ahawath Chesed congregation in 1872. Designed by Henry Fernbach, a Prussian-born Jewish architect who emigrated to the United States shortly before the Civil War, the synagogue was built along a basilica plan with a tall central nave and two flanking aisles beneath a pair of overhanging galleries. The exterior walls alternated dark New Jersey brownstone with light Ohio sandstone. The gabled roof was tiled with black and red slate laid in bands. In accordance with late-nineteenth-century practice, the sanctuary was oriented towards the west, where the rabbi led the prayer ritual from a bema before the elaborately milled ark. Fernbach integrated Moorish-revival decorative elements into his essentially gothic design. Crenellated metal bands decorated the parapets along the Lexington Street facade, while two gilded-copper onion domes each topped, curiously, with a five pointed star stood above the facade's twin 122-foot towers. The use of Moorish and romanticized Islamic motifs in synagogue design had begun earlier in the century in Europe, where the theme was employed as a reminder of the Jewish "Golden Age" in Iberia during Arab rule.

By 1870, several American synagogues featured Moorish-revival elements. At Central Synagogue, Fernbach created an elaborate and intricate interior with Moorish designs whose contours were stenciled onto the sanctuary walls and then hand painted. For the sanctuary floor, a space of nearly 4,000 square feet, Fernbach ordered more than 20,000 encaustic tiles from England and alternated that pattern with bands of brown quarry tile. The sanctuary was lit with gas-fired chandeliers that hung from arches beneath the galleries, as well as by 12 double-story stained-glass windows. The cost of the original project was $300,000.

"These weren't Episcopalians or Catholics, with a long history and strong community in New York," says Hardy, with characteristic showmanship. "These were a few dozen Jews, recently moved to the East Side, who believed they were going to make something spectacular. This was a time when interiors were lit by gas, when people traveled by horse and carriage and wore a lot morethan they do today. They set out to dazzle with this building. And they did."

The search for the soul of Central Synagogue included both documentary and physical research. HHPA commissioned Dan Peter Kopple & Associates to prepare an archival report. Their research showed that Central Synagogue had suffered a series of traumas and interventions long before the 1998 fire. In 1886, the building was damaged by a fire, during which most of the original decorative stencilings were lost. The gas-fired chandeliers were electrified in 1903, changing their configuration and the intensity of the interior lighting. Large sections of the sanctuary and vestry were repainted in 1937. In 1946, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Ahawath Chesed congregation, Central Synagogue was subject to a $300,000 comprehensive restoration. Directed by architect Ely Jacques Kahn, this Modernist-inspired restoration gave the synagogue improved kitchen and toilet facilities, a new roof, new light fixtures, and an enlarged auditorium. But Kahn, who abhorred historicism,significantly altered the 1886 Moorish-revival wall decorations, which, although not actually original, were thought to be faithful to the original. Kahn also replaced stained-glass windows with windows of abstract design and removed the chandeliers, substituting Art Deco sconces as light sources.

At one point, the slate roof was replaced by metal, with three unsightly airducts. In 1992, the ceilings under the galleries were skimcoated with plaster and painted navigation elements/white. In 1995, the synagogue's building committee elected to launch a five-year restoration plan to improve seating, acoustics, and functionality, and to install air-conditioning. In 1998, three days before the air-conditioning was to be turned on, Central Synagogue nearly burned to the ground.

"One of the many things that makes this job different from others I've been involved with is the substantial amount of demolition," says Jonathan Schloss, a HHPA associate and project manager for the restoration. He stands in the Central Synagogue project room in HHPA's 19th-floor Broadway offices.The shelves and tables around him are packed with synagogue artifacts: encaustic tiles, stencil decorations, fabric samples, a shred of rusted metal from the tower parapet crenellations. Behind him are two enlarged photographs,one an actual 1991 exterior shot of the building, the second a mock-up of the same image as it will appear after the work is done in April. The differences, on the exterior, are subtle.

"The roof was almost entirely burnt, but the original wooden beams survived the blaze," says Schloss, who is working on the building with project architect Nina Freedman. "We were also able to find enough plaster samples to understand how the decorative scheme worked. Then we literally destroyed what remained of the roof, leaving of course the beams. It made for several very interesting months."

Fortunately, there was a substantial quantity of original materials for the architects to study. The 1998 fire spared the ark and the wall-stenciling around it, which is believed to be original and which served as a baselinefor reconstruction. Two original pews also survived the blaze, as did the bulk of the encaustic floor tiles and the rose window on the Lexington Avenuefacade. Yet with all the meticulous archival and physical information available to the restoration team, many decisions were inevitably intuitive. The selection of colors for the sanctuary was based on paint analysis, but also on a wholly subjective interpretation of how those original colors appeared to nineteenth-century worshippers. Schloss points to a photograph in the restoration report, a late nineteenth-century time-exposure taken during an evening service. In it, gas-fired chandeliers appear like bleeding, cumbersome suns, suggesting that despite the bold extravagant interior design, the ambience and atmosphere of the prayer ritual was somber and mysterious.

"We could easily duplicate the exact original colors from existing samples," explains Schloss. "But the effect would be very different from what we believe it was. On average, lighting is 30 percent brighter today than it was a century ago. The identical colors with today's illumination would be farmore vivid than they were when the synagogue was opened. This wasn't the statement that we wanted to make."

The team's decision on the stained glass was also interpretive, dictatedby the availability of original materials and also by a desire to preserve some of the changes over the life of the synagogue. Most of the 1872 stainedglass was replaced in 1949 and in the 1970s. At the time of the fire, the only original glass left was the clerestory roundels all but four of which were destroyed during the blaze and two partial windows found in the storage room and the southeast stair tower. The two surviving clerestory windows will be restored, with the remaining roundels reconstructed after tracings of the 1872 windows. The twelve large sanctuary windows will form a temporal collage, with two restored to their 1872 appearance, and the remaining ten recreating the look before the fire.

Hardy and his colleagues also decided that the ark, its surrounding stenciling, and the eternal light which also survived the 1998 fire would collectively serve as a visual anchor for the entire decorative scheme. "This was the centerpiece of the original sanctuary," says Hardy. "And this will be the centerpiece of our restoration. All eyes must eventually look towards the ark." Inside, the team chose to hang electric chandeliers under the samearches that once were lit by gas. They ordered 800 encaustic tiles that will be glazed to blend in with the historic patina formed on the surviving tiles. New wooden pews are being built based on the original design, with a slightly altered backrest angle for increased comfort. Outside, the team plans to replace the metal roof with black and red slate tiles, to recreate the original metal crenellations along the towers and parapets, and to clean and re-gild the onion domes.

Although it was the most visible part, the historic reconstruction was only part of the job. The building had to be modified to conform to existing building codes and to the needs of its current congregation. "It's a simple job, but it's also very complicated," says Hardy. "Simple because the designitself is very simple. Complicated because we have to integrate modern lighting, audio systems, air conditioning, electric systems, and kitchen facilities all without changing the building's character."

Hardy, Schloss, and Freedman have had ample experience ushering historicstructures into modern times without sacrificing personality or tradition. What was unusual at Central Synagogue was the level of client participation in the design process. "Rabbi Rubinstein was very much involved, both in theconstruction and also in approving the design elements of the building," says Nelson, with admiration. "His knowledge grew exponentially and very quickly. Now, in addition to being a superb rabbi, he probably knows enough to bea member of the AIA." With Rabbi Rubinstein as the point man, the congregation formed steering, design, and restoration committees, all of whom met on a regular basis with the architects. "Our first reaction was to rebuild it exactly the way it was," says Ben Baxt, a New York architect and member of the restoration and building committees. "But then a number of us realized that this was an opportunity to address some items that could improve the facility."

"A lot of the features of this restoration were things we had been trying to accomplish before," says Thompson, who took over as Central Synagogue'sexecutive director in 1993. "We wanted to be able to reflect some of the ways that worship has evolved since the synagogue was first built. But the building always fought us."

"This is a very emotional project," says architect Nina Freedman. "The congregation formed many committees that met regularly with us. All of the people involved have very long memories. They've had their marriages and funerals and bar mitzvahs here. We had to listen a lot. And a lot of the changes in the design came out of those committee meetings."

The congregation committees were almost unanimous in electing to recover theoriginal 1872 interior and exterior design. But with the fire leaving a tabula rasa on the sanctuary floor, they were also free to fantasize and request significant changes that would reflect changes in contemporary worship. One request was a sanctuary floor plan that would accommodate both the large, formal services of the high holidays, and the more intimate, informal sabbath sessions of the summer months. Rabbi Rubinstein was already accustomedto taking his microphone, stepping down from the bema, and walking down thecenter aisles. But the congregants, seated in their fixed pews, couldn't see him. Accordingly, the HHPA team designed an adjustable bema that could be lowered and extended with its reading table onto the floor level. They also created lighter half-length pews for the first 13 rows to facilitate alternative configurations. The creation of the free space at the front of the sanctuary also required that the floor be reinforced.

"Each design decision has a ripple effect," says Baxt, who is a Saturday-morning regular at Central Synagogue. "The building code requires differentfloor loading for non-fixed seating than it does for fixed, as you can overload a free floor."

Many congregants also requested that the steps at the front entrance be lowered. "It was always very scary watching elderly and frail people climb thosesteps," says Thompson. "Especially on the high holidays, when it was crowded." The new, more gradual stairs require that the lobby be lowered 13.5 inches. Two existing stairs in the lobby will also be removed to ease crowding. To reach floor level, worshippers will climb four new stairs at the back of the sanctuary. Another point of discontent was the ground-level space, which one congregant described as being "barely fit for Boy Scout meetings." Thenew space will offer seating for nearly 500 people during high-holiday services, with another 1,400 accommodated simultaneously in the sanctuary. The central portion of the floor is being lowered 28 inches to add focus to the space, which can be sectioned off with a moveable wall.

"Ultimately, this project is the restoration of a place of worship," says Rabbi Rubinstein of the $40-million project that everyone hopes will be completed by spring. "This is a landmark building, but even more it is a place where our congregation prays. And our congregation prays differently today thanit did in 1872. It would have been inauthentic and irresponsible to go backto the original design. What we're doing, I hope, is fulfilling the missionof those people who built the building, but doing it as they would have done in the year 2000."