Kiever Synagogue - Synagogue Building

Synagogue Building

As the congregation grew to 50 members, it raised sufficient funds, in 1917, to purchase a house, with a $6,000 mortgage, at 25 Bellevue Avenue. The new location was on the outskirts of Kensington Market, which was becoming a bustling Jewish neighbourhood as immigrants gradually lifted themselves out of the abject poverty of the Ward and moved west.

In 1921, a second house was purchased and by 1923, the congregation grew prosperous enough to build a new synagogue on the site of the two houses. The location, at the corner of Denison Square and Bellevue, was originally the site of Belle Vue, the house built in 1815 by the area's first British settler Captain George Taylor Denison, and demolished around 1890. The new building, with a capacity for 400 people, was designed by Benjamin Swartz, and financed by a $16,000 (today $210,000) mortgage. Construction took place between 1924 and 1927, during which services were held in members' homes.

Designed in the Byzantine Revival style, the building's exterior featured twin domed red-brick towers crowned with Stars of David, and two opposing main staircases leading up to separate main entrances on the south side. The sanctuary, however, faced the east in accordance with the tradition that Jews face Jerusalem while praying. The pews surrounded a central bimah from which services were led. In accordance with Orthodox tradition, men sat on the main floor, while women sat above in the gallery. The sanctuary's interior was illuminated by geometric stained-glass windows, featured brass ornamentation and was dominated by a huge hand-carved Torah ark, acquired in 1931. In 1934–35 paintings of biblical animals and signs of the zodiac were added to the gallery, and murals of Jerusalem and Rachel's Tomb painted on the walls of the social hall, which was in the basement. The building and sanctuary remain largely unchanged today.