Exterior detail of Unity Temple in Oak Park. Photo by Lois Kimmelman.
By Lois Kimmelman, LEED AP
It could be argued that Frank Lloyd Wright’s life was “too unbelievable to believe,” as Chicago architect Gunny Harboe says. His was a life beset by disaster after disaster, yet marked by triumph after triumph. The designs of many of Wright’s buildings never saw the light of day, but the ones that did were literally groundbreaking and glorious. Take, for example, his Beth Sholom Synagogue in Elkins Park, Pa., or Unity Temple in Oak Park, Ill. Though weathered and leaky, both are celestial spaces intended for communing both with other congregants and with the heavens. While witnessing your brother’s Bar Mitzvah in the synagogue or your niece’s wedding in the Temple, your gaze (and mind) can’t help but wander toward the perfect geometry of every detail and the myriad colors and textures of walls and window frames. Ultimately you look up and marvel at the light filtering in and changing with the position of the sun and clouds overhead.
At left and middle are interior photos by Lois Kimmelman. At right, One Earth Film Fest screened two documentaries at Unity Temple in April.
Unity Temple has seen many changes since the original construction crew put the finishing touches on the 22-roofed edifice in 1908. Although not the victim of fire or any such Wrightian debacle, it was built to replace the town’s Unity Church, a typical European house of worship whose steeple was struck by lightning in 1905 and which then burned to the ground. Wright, an Oak Park resident, offered to usher in the new century by creating what amounts to two connected concrete blocks housing a sanctuary and a gathering space. The likes of this new church with its austere façade had never been seen before, and early 20th-century Unitarians would have been shocked that, more than a century later, not only preservationists but also the general public would worship the building itself, and bend over backwards to keep it in its original state.
Beth Sholom Synagogue in Elkins Park, Pa., was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who completed it in 1959. Photo by Lois Kimmelman.
Preservationists tend to butt heads with modernists, but in the case of both Unity Temple and its newer “cousin”, Beth Sholom, the two factions often reach an (uneasy) peace. The synagogue, topped by an innovative glass tetrahedral dome, had a modern wing attached which even sported a community pool for several years. (The pool is now closed.) And since Unity Temple’s latest renovation in 2017, led by Harboe Architects, a plethora of modern features, many cleverly hidden from view in columns or ductwork, have coexisted with historic elements. Moreover, a lot of the newfangled improvements—a geothermal heating/cooling system, energy-saving LED lights, upgraded skylights, motion sensors—might even qualify the Temple as a certifiable green structure. Thanks to the geothermal apparatus' connection with the moderate temperatures of the earth, the building is air-conditioned for the first time in its history.
Geothermal heat and cooling was installed at Unity Temple in 2015. Photo by Lois Kimmelman.
The Temple’s lights are connected to motion sensors which are linked to a new state-of-the-art security system. This allows the lights to do double duty, i.e. they both provide illumination and, when they turn on automatically during off-hours, could serve as an alert that an intruder may be lurking about. Other high-tech additions include fancy Wifi and AV systems. A screen for displaying visuals and showing movies was installed behind the pulpit. In fact, A OneEarth Film Festival film was shown in the sanctuary in April 2024.
To celebrate the Temple’s centennial, a piece of classical music fittingly titled "The Coming of Light” was composed by Peter Lieberson. It was performed at the Temple in 2023. Yet another example of the Temple’s harmony between old and new, just as Wright intended.
Read more about historic buildings getting a green makeover on Lois Kimmelman’s website/blog, Historecycle. She promotes restoration and renovation, not demolition. Links to specific related articles are below:
Unity Temple:
https://historecycle.com/unity-temple
https://www.historecycle.com/single-post/2016/10/31/wright-s-temple-is-unwrapped
Beth Sholom:
Shutterstock/David Harmantas