The Greenbank Drive Synagogue was built in 1936/7 and is the work of the notable Liverpool architect Sir Ernest Alfred Shennan. Most of his other work is also in Merseyside and comprises a diversity of building types. His inter-war designs included Westminster Banks; five cinemas including the listed Forum Cinema on Lime Street, Liverpool; restaurant interiors (The French Café and Arabic Café, both 1933, Liverpool); dance halls (The Grafton Rooms, Liverpool, 1934); hotels and office blocks. Greenbank Drive is Shennan’s only synagogue and is very different to the rest of his oeuvre up to that time which, apart from the banks, was distinctive art deco.
The Synagogue has a re-inforced concrete and steel frame structure, with the external walls faced in ‘golden brown’ hand cut bricks.
The daylight flooded interior is more original and inventive, reflecting Swedish functionalism without any direct homage. A cantilevered gallery is wrapped around three sides (open at the east end) in a graceful elliptical curve. The spectacular and innovatory ceiling configuration has a barrel curve between the north and south sides of the building springing from above continuous canopies of intersecting segmented concrete arches which run west-east above the upper range of windows on each side of the building. There is a clerestory of semi circular lunettes, each set within and framed by a segmented curve of the concrete canopy above. This concrete canopy is understood to be the very first use of this architectural form in Great Britain. This may well have been an influence on similar concrete canopy designs during the 1960s. See in particular the canopies of very similar design at St. Peter’s Seminary, Cardross designed by Isi Metzstein of Gillespie Kidd and Coia (1962/68 – Scottish Grade A).
I hope you guys enjoy
The Synagogue has a re-inforced concrete and steel frame structure, with the external walls faced in ‘golden brown’ hand cut bricks.
The daylight flooded interior is more original and inventive, reflecting Swedish functionalism without any direct homage. A cantilevered gallery is wrapped around three sides (open at the east end) in a graceful elliptical curve. The spectacular and innovatory ceiling configuration has a barrel curve between the north and south sides of the building springing from above continuous canopies of intersecting segmented concrete arches which run west-east above the upper range of windows on each side of the building. There is a clerestory of semi circular lunettes, each set within and framed by a segmented curve of the concrete canopy above. This concrete canopy is understood to be the very first use of this architectural form in Great Britain. This may well have been an influence on similar concrete canopy designs during the 1960s. See in particular the canopies of very similar design at St. Peter’s Seminary, Cardross designed by Isi Metzstein of Gillespie Kidd and Coia (1962/68 – Scottish Grade A).
I hope you guys enjoy
