Former North Side Synagogue Building Added To National Registry

North Minneapolis’ First Church of God In Christ – Graham Temple, which from 1926 to 1957 had been Tifereth B’nai Jacob Synagogue, is part of the National Registry of Historic Places. It is the second Minnesota building that at one point in its history had been a synagogue.

The effort was organized by art and architectural historian Marilyn Chiat and Jeanne Halgren Kilde, director of religious studies at the University of Minnesota. The two have been working on a project documenting historic places of worship in Minneapolis neighborhoods as a way to un-silo religions from each other.

“Every religion and ethnic group has been studied separately from one another, but that isn’t how they lived,” said Chiat. “We were interested in the relationships and what the buildings could tell us about those relationships.”

Chiat had a personal interest in the Near North neighborhood of Minneapolis – until she was 15 she lived at 901 Fremont Avenue North, and realized in the process of doing the 136-page documentation for the National Registry, that she went to Tifereth B’nai Jacob as a four-year-old. Chiat, who also helped B’nai Abraham in Virginia, Minn., get on the National Registry, turned 93 earlier in August.

“When I walked into [Tifereth B’nai Jacob/First Church of God in Christ], I was just astonished when I saw it,” Chiat said. “Jeanne, because of my establishment, realized there must be something very spectacular about it.”

The synagogue was built by Jewish immigrants from Bessarabia, which is part of Moldova in Eastern Europe. Sylvia Fine, a historian and tour guide who leads North Minneapolis Jewish historical walking tours, said that was the second wave of Jewish immigrants to the Twin Cities; the first wave were German immigrants in the 1850s who started Mount Zion Temple and later Temple Israel.

“Within about 10 years, 11 orthodox synagogues grew up in that area, and they were all related to different areas in Russia where the immigrants came from,” Fine explained. She said as that area began to decay, they moved to what is now the Near North Side, including Tiffereth B’nai Jacob.

The Tiffereth B’nai Jacob building built in 1926 was built atop one of the few hills in North Minneapolis, fulfilling a Jewish tradition that a house of worship should have the highest roof in the neighborhood. 

In 1932, the interior was restored after a fire of “unknown origin,” Chiat said. The redecoration featured trompe l’oeil (“deceive the eye”) motifs and zodiac images, patterned after synagogue decoration in the immigrant congregation’s homeland.

[From left to right] FCOGIC Director John Lewis, Dr. Marilyn Chiat, Jessie Merriam, Jade Ryerson, and Dr. Greg Donofrio standing atop a balcony in the FCOGIC building. The ceilings are painted like the sky, and the face balcony painted with gold zodiac medallions.

[From left to right] First Church of God in Christ Director John Lewis, Dr. Marilyn Chiat, Jessie Merriam, Jade Ryerson, and Dr. Greg Donofrio standing atop a balcony in the FCOGIC building. The ceilings are painted like the sky, and the facade of the balcony is painted with gold zodiac medallions. (University of Minnesota photo)

“There have been zodiac images in synagogues since the fourth century,” Chiat said. “This synagogue is, as far as we know, the only one in the Twin Cities that had the Zodiac. And not only the signs, but the images. They’re along the edge of the balcony, beautifully rendered, and they read from right to left, just like Hebrew, starting with Libra, which is the fall.

“It’s brilliant. Whoever put together the program for that interior was a highly knowledgeable person, and the artist who created it was highly skilled.”

In 1957, the building was purchased by the Graham Temple, an African American Pentecostal Christian congregation, which has owned and stewarded the building ever since. The congregation was founded in 1923 by three couples from the Tulsa, Okla., area who headed north during the Great Migration. Under the leadership of Bishop John Graham, the church bought the building and adopted the name First Church of God in Christ in addition to the Graham Temple name. The artwork that Chiat talked about has been preserved in the church’s 69 years in the building, owning up to the respect that they have for the space.

“[They] could have painted it, but it was so beautiful, and it meant something to us as well,” Chiat said. “The ahron hakodesh, if you open it, has a stained glass window in the back and they left the stained glass window there.”

The building was approved for inclusion on the National Register under three categories: the artistic significance of the rare interior decoration, which remains in near original condition; the historical and social importance of the Jewish and African American congregations in the development and growth of the North Minneapolis area; and the religious significance of these two communities in Minneapolis, particularly First Church’s role as the Church of God in Christ denomination’s first headquarters in the state.

The research took more than two years to complete, and was financially supported with grants from the Minnesota Humanities Council and the Minnesota Historical Society.

“There’s so much history, and it’s such rich history,” Fine said. “It’s unique because it was a Jewish neighborhood, early on, [but] there really was a respect, and the (Jewish and African-American) communities got along quite well. The unity of those two minority groups are wonderful. Yes, it all changed in the 60s, but it was the sign of the times.”