Approximately 50 cities worldwide, including San Diego and three others in the United States, offer free Open Houses at venues considered to be architecturally significant. This year, March 6-8, San Diego will put on display 93 different locations, including Ohr Shalom Synagogue at 3rd and Laurel Streets in Bankers Hill as well as a few other places with ties to prominent members of the Jewish community.
Those include the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, founded by Jonas Salk and designed by architect Louis Kahn; the IGPP Munk Laboratory designed by the late oceanographer Walter Munk and his wife Judith Horton Munk in association with architect Lloyd Ruocco; the San Diego Central Library at the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Common, named for the co-founder of Qualcomm and his wife; and the Hotel del Coronado, which underwent considerable expansion during the period it was owned by M. Larry Lawrence.
San Diego is the only metropolitan area on the U.S. West Coast that thus far has become a part of the Open House movement, the other three American cities being New York, Chicago, and Atlanta. It is the fifth year that San Diego has been part of the 30-year-old architectural movement.
Carol Chin, program director for the San Diego Architectural Foundation (who also volunteers as a docent at the Salk Institute) said the 93 venues selected for this year’s Open House weekend include “architects’ offices, hotels, interior spaces, residences, work spaces, theaters, galleries, laboratories, and walking tours” in addition to places of worship including Ohr Shalom Synagogue, which was designed in 1925 by architect William Wheeler as the second home of Congregation Beth Israel. Wheeler also designed the Balboa Theatre downtown, which is another venue participating in OH San Diego. (CBI’s first home, which came into use during the High Holy Days of 1889, had originally been located at 2nd and Beech Streets, and was subsequently moved to Heritage Park in the Old Town area of San Diego as an example of 19th Century Victorian architecture.)
At the turn of the millennium, Beth Israel, a Reform congregation, moved to its third and present location, a campus in the University Towne Centre neighborhood of San Diego. After a successful struggle to save from the bulldozers its second home, at Third and Laurel Streets in the Bankers Hill neighborhood, the historic structure was purchased by members of Ohr Shalom Synagogue, which is a Conservative congregation.
According to the San Diego Architectural Foundation, Ohr Shalom is architecturally significant because of its “embellished octagonal sanctuary” and its “beautiful and dominant Moorish-style dome and Middle Eastern decorative motifs that adorn the synagogue.” Rabbi Scott Meltzer serves as the congregation’s spiritual leader. The Open House has been scheduled for March 8 only, so as not to interfere with Shabbat, which falls on the night of March 6 and day of March 7.
A complete list of all 93 venues participating in Open House San Diego, along with times and brief descriptions, is available via this website.
Republished from San Diego Jewish World