Ballarat Synagogue 1861: very elegant

Ballarat is Victoria’s third biggest city, its establishment being largely based on the gold rush of the 1851. The first Jewish services were held in a hotel in busy Lydiard St (Clarendon Hotel), as early as 1853. So within two years after gold was discovered in the area, a fledgling Jewish community in Ballarat could already be identified. The numbers grew until a permanent synagogue was required.

Front entrance

A first synagogue was built in Ballarat East, but in 1859 the Town Council requisitioned the land for its own town hall. In compensation, the Town Council granted the congregation a replacement site at the corner of Barkly and Princess Streets, and paid for the new building.

Designed by an English architect, TB Cameron, it was consecrated in 1861. Documents from that consecration ceremony are held in the University of Sydney archives.

The Ballarat newspapers were delighted that such an elegant building had been completed. They felt it gave Ballarat, so recently a tatty mining town of tents and cheap pubs, the cachet of refinement and learning. The city’s main street, Sturt St, was planted with blue gums in the 1860s and gardens down the centre. The beautiful Ballarat Mechanics' Institute in Sturt St, was opened in 1860. Walter Craig bought the magnificent Craig’s Hotel in 1857. His guests included Prince Albert, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke of Clarence, the Duke and Duchess of York and Dame Nellie Melba. Opened as the Academy of Music in 1875, Her Majesty’s Theatre attracted the cream of the industry to Ballarat. Beautiful churches in bluestone attracted as much attention as the synagogue.

Reading desk and ark

According to the Heritage Council, the Synagogue is a single storey rectangular building designed in a renaissance style with pedimented portico fronting a parapeted main hall. Paired Tuscan squared columns and pilasters support the portico, the tympanum of which contains the Hebrew name of the congregation. Tuscan pilasters support the deep cornice of the main parapet and divide the side facades into bays. Simple, tall round-headed window openings flank the front portico, along the sides of the main hall.

Remodelling was undertaken in 1878, including the extension of the women's gallery along the sides of the hall (instead of just along the back wall), and the addition of a second staircase to the gallery and ante-rooms towards the front of the building. Externally the latter are in a style consistent with that of the building. The Synagogue was originally constructed in face brickwork, with contrast provided by rendered pilasters and columns. Since then, the entire building has since been rendered.

The interior of the synagogue is largely intact with its original furniture and fittings, including a cedar bimah-reading table and cedar-fronted ark. The cast iron balustrading on the women’s gallery comes as something of a surprise. The building was designed to accommodate 350.

Women's gallery

It is difficult to know how many Jewish people lived in Ballarat during the heyday of the community. The 300 identified members of the congregation only included the men, so perhaps there were 1000 people altogether in the 1870s and 1880s. On the whole, the Jewish men were not themselves gold miners; rather they were shop keepers and tradesmen, servicing the miners. But the Jewish population of Ballarat fell away with the collapse of the banking system in 1891 and never recovered its earlier importance.

The Paul Simon Hall behind the synagogue was the original Jewish school house for Ballarat; and noone seems to have any information about this small building.

This regional city has one of the few surviving C19th synagogues in Victoria, so the building was quickly put on the Victorian Heritage Register of significant sites. Today it is only used for services on holy days, weddings and when Jewish tour groups arrive from Melbourne and Sydney.

The Ballarat Synagogue is not hemmed by tall buildings, nonetheless it is not as light and airy as it might have been. Examine the Congregation of Jacob Synagogue /Kehillas Ya'akov, in the East End of London, which was founded in 1903. Totally hemmed in between the adjacent buildings, the Congregation of Jacob's glass roof allows natural light to flood into the nave.