14 Facts About Percival Goodman

Percival Goodman was an American urban theorist and architect who designed more than 50 synagogues between 1948 and 1983.

Percival Goodman was born in New York City to parents who were in the arts business.

Percival Goodman's father was a leading New York auctioneer who abandoned the family when Percival was young.

Percival Goodman's brother was the noted writer and sociologist Paul Goodman.

In 1925, Percival Goodman received the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects Paris Prize which sent him to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, for architectural training.

Percival Goodman had an interest in urban planning: he submitted a 1930 proposal for the Palace of the Soviets in Moscow, and proposed a master plan for Long Island City.

Percival Goodman was an early critic of Robert Moses' parkway plans for New York City, preferring to "improve the center and make livable neighborhoods"; he criticized the garden city movement of Ebenezer Howard and the Ville Radieuse of Le Corbusier.

Percival Goodman called himself "an agnostic who was converted by Hitler", and after World War II he became more interested in Jewish architecture.

At a 1947 conference of the Reform Jewish movement, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Percival Goodman advocated the use of modern architecture for new Jewish buildings, rather than following the models of older churches and synagogues.

Many of these were for new buildings in suburban areas reachable only by car, and Percival Goodman responded by using a variety of designs intended to attract motorists' attention.

Percival Goodman "stressed the human scale in his prayer halls and collaboration with modern artists where expressive symbolism was warranted", according to Philip Nobel at the New York Times.

Percival Goodman was the co-author, with his brother Paul, of the landmark urban planning text Communitas, and he illustrated editions of a number of his brother's other works.

Percival Goodman was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

Percival Goodman was a professor at the Columbia University architecture school for more than 25 years, where notable students included Peter Eisenman and Wang Chiu-Hwa.