Exploring the hidden secrets of the 98-year-old Sinai Temple in Koreatown

Gentle reader,

Greetings from your friendly historic Los Angeles sightseeing tour company. We’ve now got neighborhood based walking tours scheduled into April, including the just announced outings Franklin Village Old Hollywood (3/18), Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (3/25), John Fante’s Downtown (4/8) and Raymond Chandler’s Downtown (4/15).

Our 2023 season begins with Human Sacrifice (1/14), a new tour exploring the unholy intersection of housing insecurity, corruption and death through the lens of the Black Dahlia, Skid Row Slasher, Elisa Lam and Heidi Planck cases. And we’re so pleased that we’ll be joined by our true crime historian pal Joan Renner, who many of you know from crime bus tours like Eastside Babylon and The Real Black Dahlia.

With no tour scheduled this weekend, how about a virtual one? For our latest post that’s hidden from the rest of the internet, we want to take you on a rare visit all over inside an incredible time capsule in the heart of Koreatown: the second Sinai Temple (Norton & Wallis, 1925) at 4th and New Hampshire. (Sinai Temple’s first Greek Revival synagogue by the same architect still stands at 12th and Valencia—home to the Welsh Presbyterian Church until that musical congregation dissolved in 2012, it now houses the Pico-Union Project.) Both historic synagogues are protected city landmarks.

Chamber of Commerce, 1930 (LAPL) / Esotouric, 2022

The Byzantine Revival 1920s Sinai Temple is easy to miss, on its sleepy corner just west of Vermont. But just one short block off the bustling commuter corridor, the monumental Sinai abides.

When unveiled, it was the pride of the Los Angeles Conservative Jewish community, and intended to last for generations—and except for its decorative domes, it has. The builders didn’t anticipate the waves of Jewish immigration that within a few years made the temple a tight fit, or on the local movement of the Jewish community ever westward.

Sinai Temple, Sidney Eisenshtat, 1959, pencil, watercolor, and gouache on board (USC Helen Topping Architecture and Fine Arts Library)

In 1960, Sinai relocated to Westwood, to a massive new $2,000,000 compound by modernist architect Sidney Eisenshtat that takes up much of a city block.

The rabbi packed up the holy books and the file cabinets, but left almost everything else behind, a frozen in amber 1920s moderne masterpiece that was a turnkey solution for other faiths based in the dense neighborhood.

Eventually, the old temple and its offices and classrooms became home to the Korean Philadelphia Presbyterian Church, a congregation that moved neatly into the Jewish space making just one notable change: crosses were delicately painted over, and erected above, the Star of David on the east facade.

But enough of just admiring this beauty from the sidewalk. After wondering about it for years, we recently reached out to church management and asked if we might come visit, along with a couple of Jewish and architectural historian colleagues. They were most welcoming, eager to share the building that means so much to them, and to learn more of its history. So come on… let’s go exploring!