The wooden synagogue, the drawings it left, and the timber architecture it belonged to

The whole site

Everything

Six sections, twenty-five pieces. The sections are edits; this is the complete list.

25 pieces · 6 sections

The register

All twenty-five pieces
PieceSection
Twenty Students, One Summer, and the Only Drawings We HaveIn the 1920s, Warsaw University of Technology ran a programme of architectural fieldwork surveys in which groups of students were dispatched each summer to document vernacular and historic buildings across Poland.The Drawings
Plans, Sections, Elevations — and What Each One Is ForA measured survey of a timber building produces three kinds of drawing.The Drawings
The Piechotkas Collected Them AllA single 1959 volume gathered the survey record for an entire class of vanished buildings — and it has not been superseded.The Drawings
1637, or Thereabouts — the Founding Date and Its SourcesThe year 1637 appears in the literature consistently enough to feel settled.The Drawings
The Bimah at Close RangeSurvey drawings show the raised reading platform in unusual detail — and still leave questions the dimensions alone cannot answer.The Drawings
A Log Wall Is Held by Its Corners, and by Nothing ElseIn notched-corner log construction, the joint at each end of each log is both the fastening and the structure — a system that requires no nails through the wall, no mortised frame, and no hidden ironwork.Timber
Shingle: Cut, Laid, and Replaced by CourseA split shingle and a sawn plank are different objects — one lasts, the other doesn't.Timber
Untreated Timber Has a Maintenance Schedule, Not a LifespanThe phrase "wooden building" carries an implied fragility that the structural record does not support.Timber
The Region Around Zabłudów, Built in WoodPodlaskie's ordinary buildings were timber buildings.Timber
Six Churches, One Inscription, and a Technique That Predates the PaperworkA UNESCO listing made in 2003 brought official recognition to six timber buildings in southern Poland — but the log-joinery tradition they embody had already been building synagogues, tserkvas, and farmsteads across the region for centuries before any authority thought to name it.Still Standing
Sixteen Tserkvas, Eight of Them on This Side of the BorderA joint Polish–Ukrainian inscription made in 2013 fixed sixteen timber Orthodox churches on the UNESCO World Heritage List — and set out what, precisely, their shared building tradition consists of.Still Standing
The Region Around Zabłudów Is Unlisted and Mostly UnprotectedPodlaskie's timber vernacular falls between the UNESCO inscriptions and faces the same slow pressures that ended the synagogue.Still Standing
Tykocin: A Baroque Synagogue That Is Still ThereA masonry building in the same region as Zabłudów — one that survived the war and stands available for direct inspection today.Still Standing
Sanok Took Buildings Apart in Order to Keep ThemAn open-air museum founded in 1958 has saved more than a hundred timber buildings by moving them — and its approach to authentic reconstruction made it the right place for the Zabłudów work.Sanok
The Gwoździec Roof Went Up TwiceThe wooden synagogue of Gwoździec stood in a small town that is today Husiatyn raion in western Ukraine, constructed most likely in the late seventeenth century.Sanok
Why Rick and Laura Brown Cut the Joints by HandWhen Handshouse Studio — the American craft-education organisation founded by Rick Brown and Laura Brown — began work on the reconstruction of the Gwoździec synagogue roof, the question of tooling was not aesthetic.Sanok
A Visitor Stands Under It, Not in Front of ItThe reconstructed painted ceiling from the Gwoździec synagogue hangs at its original height inside the core exhibition of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, which opened in 2014.Sanok
Two and a Half Thousand People, Twenty Kilometres from BiałystokZabłudów sits on the road between Białystok and Bielsk Podlaski, roughly twenty kilometres southeast of the regional capital.Zabłudów
The Orthodox Church of the Dormition, and the Catholic Parish Next to ItTwo buildings in wood and masonry record a denominational history that the town's present population can no longer fully claim.Zabłudów
The Jewish Cemetery and Its StonesThe Jewish cemetery at Zabłudów stands on the southern margin of the town, on ground that was set aside for burial well before the community reached its peak size in the nineteenth century.Zabłudów
Białystok and What Surrounds ItA city, a forest, a monastery, and two mosques: the landmarks that frame Zabłudów's position in the northeastern corner of Poland.Zabłudów
Where the Paper Is KeptThe synagogue at Zabłudów no longer stands.Archives
YIVO and the Photographs That Are the Building NowThe Zabłudów synagogue stood until 1941, when it was destroyed during the German occupation.Archives
The Virtual Shtetl Project and What It IndexesVirtual Shtetl is an online platform operated by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.Archives
The State Archives in Białystok Hold the Town's Pre-War RegistersCivil and religious record series from Zabłudów survive at the Polish State Archives in Białystok — bureaucratic documents that double as evidence of the town's material and social fabric before 1941.Archives