The long-delayed restoration of the wooden “Green Synagogue” in Rezekne, Latvia — built around 1845 and one of the few wooden synagogues still standing in Europe — is progressing, with the target date for completion of the project set as December 2015. The synagogue is the only surviving synagogue out of 11 that once stood in the town; it was last used for services in the 1990s.
The restoration work, which had been attempted for more than a decade before it formally kicked off in April 2014, has a total budget of more than €711,000 and is funded by grants from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway via the European Economic Area (EEA) Financial Mechanism (€574,485 or 85 percent); the Latvian government (€101 380) and the city of Rezekne (€35,572).
Samuel Gruber described the architecture and pre-restoration condition of the building on his blog, before the start of the restoration:
The Green Synagogue is one-and-a-half story square-plan building with a shallow four-slope roof. The facade is modest; the windows of the ground floor have semicircle lintels, and above them are “blind windows”. Inside, benches, bimah and Ark are still intact, but these may not be original to the building. A one-and-a-half story glazed gallery is above the main entrance. The building suffered significant water damage until the roof was repaired with government funds a few years ago. The interior painted ceilings are in bad condition with sections missing and the interior walls also are damaged. Overall, the exterior is in better condition but also shows signs of damaged timbers including some damage that may be the result of vandalism over the years.
Pictures posted in September on the project’s Facebook page show workers installing window frames and a stained glass window, and painting the exterior.
See gallery of Facebook photos
A video on the page, also posted in September, presents a summary of restoration, with footage also of the state of the building before restoration commenced.
Project partners in the restoration include three art, design and vocational schools in Norway and Latvia, and among the objectives is to “use wooden buildings elements as restoration training objects, to implement restoration of unique wooden object, to develop new tourism and culture product in Latgale region” — and in doing so organize training courses for students as well as to strengthen international information and experience exchange among craftsmen, students, teachers of vocational schools, restorers from Norway and Latvia.
{F]our different groups of Norwegian construction students from Sam Eyde upper secondary school will go to Rezekne for a week to help restore the building. Local students from Rezekne will restore the windows in the Synagogue. Together they will be exchanging experiences on restoration and craft techniques and artisanship. The project also aims to increase the knowledge of wood restoration techniques to enable further restoration projects of other wooden buildings in Rezekne.
A Wooden Architecture Heritage Centre and a Jewish cultural heritage exhibition are to be established.
A key objective in the project is to train and motivate local people to appreciate and protect traditional wooden structures — rather than to use plastic and other man-made materials and processes when renovating buildings — and to encourage restoration of other buildings in the town.
Here’s a video from the start of the project, in April 2014, showing condition and history of the building as well as explaining what had to be done:
According to a document on the town’s web site:
Restoration of the building will significantly improve the historic centre image and can become a positive example for other wooden building restorations. Given the elaborated development plan of historic centre, restoration of the building must comply with its description in the historical sources. According to this plan, the buildings and surrounding area in the historic centre must preserve 18th and 19th century architectural features.
It states that within the project the following problems will be solved:
— Conservation of wooden architecture building using traditional decoration elements and craftsmen skills;
— Multiplication of best practice examples to citizens of the city historic centre who own wooden houses or houses with wooden decoration elements;
— Revival of the city historic centre making it accessible and attractive to tourists;
— Ensuring accessibility of the Green Synagogue as historical wooden culture heritage promoting increase of economic activities (establishing new catering enterprises in the city historic centre, facilitating sales of craftsmen products, increasing sales of local food products), creating new tourism products in the city;
— Conservation and demonstration of testimonies of Jewish culture;
— Attracting tourists to the city historic centre;
— Restoration of the oldest Baltic wooden synagogue;
— Strengthening cooperation of vocational schools at local and international level;
— Development of cooperation between municipalities, vocation education institutions and state.
See information on the project on the Rezekne town web site
See information on the EEA Grants web site
See information about the synagogue on the World Monuments Fund web site
See Samuel Gruber’s lengthy post about the synagogue before restoration began