Goodman, Percival
GOODMAN, PERCIVAL
GOODMAN, PERCIVAL (1904–1989), U.S. architect. Goodman was born in New York; he studied there, and after receiving the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects Paris Prize, he enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, in France. He was a versatile architect, an expert on city planning, and a professor of architecture at Columbia University, a position he held from 1946 to 1971. Goodman designed furniture for mass production, wrote a book (Communitas, 1947), and illustrated the Golden Ass of Apuleius (1932). In 1977 he published his work The Double E, on the relationship of ecology to city planning. He had no previous religious background when he embarked on his fruitful career as a builder of synagogues. He said that the Nazi atrocities together with his readings of Martin Buber gave him the need for concrete expression of kinship, describing himself as "an agnostic who was converted by Hitler."
Goodman's synagogues are brightly lit and tend to be small and intimate, as Goodman felt this encouraged a feeling of unity in the congregation and a sense of participation in the service. He humanized his design with the use of warm materials such as wood. He regarded the artist as an indispensable collaborator, and gave him an important place in his projects. In this respect he acted as a pioneer and helped to bring into being a flourishing modern synagogal art in the United States.
Between 1936 and 1979 Goodman designed over 50 synagogues and religious buildings. These included the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in New York, Shaarey Zedek in Detroit, the B'nai Israel Synagogue in Millburn, New Jersey, and Temple Beth-El in Springfield, Massachusetts. In addition, he designed many houses, schools, and public buildings, including Public School 92 on West 134th Street in Manhattan (1935) and the Queensborough Community College administration building (1977).
An urban theorist who believed that rational planning could produce better cities, he criticized the planning efforts of his home city New York as timid and short-sighted. Named a fellow by the American Institute of Architects, he nonetheless argued that the institute was irrelevant since it failed to take up moral or political positions.
Goodman's brother was the writer Paul *Goodman.
bibliography:
R. Wischnitzer, Synagogue Architecture in the United States (1955), 141ff.; A. Kampf, Contemporary Synagogue Art (1966), 37ff.
[Rohan Saxena (2nd ed.)]