May, 2020
Five Days of Facinating Mural Facts
May 6th, 2020, marked the 5-year anniversary of the Lost Mural’s move from Hyde Street to Ohavi Zedek Synagogue. In celebration, we shared a fascinating fact a day for the five days leading up to the 6th
Fact #1
Did you know that right now the mural is “hiding its true colors”?
The Chai Adam Synagogue, where the Lost Mural was painted in 1910, was heated with coal.
The coal smoke accumulated on the mural as grime. In an attempt to brighten the colors, the congregation coated the surface in varnish. Today, the varnish and smoke make the mural's colors appear far darker than they really are.
Conservator Constance Silver cleaned several small areas of the mural in 2015, revealing the original colors.
The Friends of the Lost Mural hope to complete the cleaning of the mural soon, in order to reveal the full effect of the mural's vibrant hues!
Conservator Constance Silver is shown cleaning a small portion of the mural. Note the difference in color between the small area Silver has cleaned and the area surrounding it.
The lions and tablets at the center of the mural, photographed in 1986
This photo shows the same area of the mural in 2015, after Constance Silver cleaned one of the two tablets, showing its original bright red color.
Fact #2
Did you know that the Lost Mural isn't the only synagogue mural in New England?
After the Lost Mural was uncovered in 2012, another synagogue mural, also featuring lions (this time holding American flags!), was discovered in North Adams, MA. Other murals also exist in Providence RI, and Chelsea, MA, and in Boston's Vilna Shul. The Lost Mural is one link in this beautiful and complex story of Jewish art in America.
More about the Beth Israel mural in North Adam, MA: http://www.cbiweb.org/History.html
More about the Sons of Jacob mural in Providence, RI: https://www.sonsofjacobsynagogue.org/history
More about Vilna Shul in Boston, MA: https://vilnashul.org/about/our_history
More about the Walnut St. Synagogue in Chelsea, MA: http://samgrubersjewishartmonuments.blogspot.com/2018/12/usa-walnut-street-shul-in-chelsea-mass.html
Fresco above the ark in the Synagogue on Francis Street in North Adams, MA - 1894
Fact #3
The Lost Mural, secured in a steel frame to prevent the fragile plaster from cracking. Shown here on the back of a flatbed truck, after being removed from the old Chai Adam Synagogue structure with a crane.
Did you know that three different awards were given to the Lost Mural Project after the 2015 move to Ohavi Zedek Synagogue?
Moving the mural was not only an important work on preservation, it was also a pretty impressive feat of engineering!
The project received Preservation Burlington’s 2015 Institutional Award. In addition, Engineering Ventures of Burlington won the 2016 Engineering Excellence Award from the Vermont section of the American Council of Engineering Companies for their work moving the mural. The contractors on the project, Great Northern Construction, won the 2016 Home Builders and Remodelers Association of Northern Vermont Better Homes Awards in the Special Feature category.
We are grateful to live in a community where a project like the Lost Mural can inspire so much support and ingenuity!
Fact #4
Did you know that the mural's painter, Ben Zion Black was not only an artist, but also a musician and a poet?
Black ran a mandolin orchestra in Burlington, and the University of Vermont Library has a collection of his Yiddish poetry. Black's story illustrates just one of Burlington’s many rich immigrant cultures! Pictured below is the interior of Black’s Burlington sign shop. “Signs of the Better Kind.”
Learn more about Black, and see a photo of his yiddish typewriter, on the Lost Mural’s website:
https://www.lostmural.org/ben-zion-black
Explore Black’s archive at the University of Vermont using this finding aid:
https://scfindingaids.uvm.edu/repositories/2/resources/165
The interior of Black’s Burlington sign shop. “Signs of the Better Kind.”
Fact #5
Did you know that the Chai Adam (Life of Man) synagogue, in which Ben Zion Black painted the “Lost Mural” in 1910, was actually built in 1889?
It was the second Orthodox synagogue in Burlington, built just two years after - and only two lots down Hyde Street from - the original Ohavi Zedek (Lovers of Justice) synagogue. While it remains a mystery why a Jewish community numbering fewer than 150 residents needed a second synagogue, wits have speculated that Morris Levin’s decision to build Chai Adam validated two classic Jewish jokes, one involving two men both wanting to be President of the synagogue at the same time; the other, a need on the part of community members to have one synagogue to which they belonged, the other which “they wouldn’t go near.” Interestingly, older residents interviewed remember congregants from the two synagogues gathering after Saturday services in front of a candy store across the street to interact and, sometimes, to argue.
The original Ohavi Zedek Synagogue, constructed on Hyde St, in Burlington, in 1887.
Chai Adam Synagogue, constructed on Hyde St, in Burlington, in 1889.