Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, Beachwood, Ohio

   Hand-chiseled in Israel to evoke the texture of an ancient city, the rough surface of the stone creates an endless play of light and shadow on the façade of the simple, solid rectangle of the main exhibit space, and bestows a serene beauty to the surrounding landscape.
   The idea for a museum of Jewish heritage happened many years ago, when Cleveland media executive Milton Maltz and his spouse, Tamar, were in Amsterdam visiting a Portuguese synagogue. Across the street from the synagogue, they found a Jewish museum detailing an important part of the history of Holland.
   In the 17th century, Holland was a small country with little influence or bearing in the world. The country had one asset, water, which was also viewed by many as a negative, until Jewish bankers and financiers decided to take advantage of the water and build a mercantile navy. Holland’s navy eventually competed with the major powers of the era, Spain, England and France; Holland’s rise to a place of prominence was based on the willingness of entrepreneurs to take risks.
   The Dutch museum led the Maltzs to discuss the tremendous entrepreneurial activities that went on in their own community of Jewish immigrants, and eventually encouraged them to tell the story of Cleveland and its pioneers. They pledged $8 million to the construction of the museum, and to begin an endowment.
   The Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland’s Centennial Initiative contributed an additional $4.3 million to the museum, built on land belonging to The Temple-Tifereth Israel. Research support was provided by the Western Reserve Historical Society. Milton Maltz was intimately involved in almost every detail of the progress of this living testament to the courage and achievements of Cleveland’s Jewish community.
   The national architectural and engineering firm, Westlake Reed Leskosky, received the task of designing the building. Established in 1905 by Abram Garfield, son of President James A Garfield, it’s one of the one of the oldest architectural firms in the country and the largest in northeastern Ohio.
   Creating a free-span rectangle and then cutting it into the ground plane contained the cost of the structure. Substantial earthwork, one of the least-expensive areas of any construction project, not only reduced the overall expense of construction, but artfully integrated the building into the landscape. It emphasized the elegance and simplicity of the architectural form, and created a precinct of building and landscape within a larger wooded area while shielding the area from nearby vehicular traffic.
   The design expresses a highly sophisticated simplicity and elegance. The main exhibit spaces and auditorium theatre of the museum are housed in a classic, solid rectangle. According to Ronald A. Reed, FAIA, IIDA, a Westlake principal and a lead designer, keeping the structure simple was one of the biggest challenges. No air shafts or heating vents mar the clean lines of the pure planes.
   The expansive walls emphasized the need for excellent material and superb craftsmanship; at the same time the simplicity of form created room in the budget for both. The beauty and symbolic significance of Jerusalem Limestone made it the obvious choice for 24,000 ft² of cladding.
   Ideally, the design would accentuate the ruggedness of the limestone and its meaningful connection to ancient walls – what Paul E. Westlake Jr., FAIA, principal in charge and a lead designer, calls the psychology of the stone. “We didn’t want walls that appeared wallpapered, but instead, hoped to reflect the ‘Diaspora of stone’ in ancient sites,” he says.
   Walls of ancient temples are often made from the remnants of older foundations, incorporating stone from buildings of many eras. They are, Westlake says, “walls that reach back through time.”
   This continuum of material gives the walls more than history – memory perhaps – as if the stones speak of the past. The design team knew that it was important to give the walls of the museum this same appearance, the randomness of salvage.
   In the historical context of its native environment, Jerusalem limestone is used in huge blocks of dry stack, and the architects wanted to achieve this feeling despite a move to the modern usage of veneer. The solution was a collaborative effort between the architects, stone fabricator and the mason, SPS & Associates of Hudson, Ohio. SPS did the engineering/shop drawings and stone tickets (in metric) and oversaw production and sequencing. They also handled the shipping of the six containers of stone and erected the entire project.
   SPS’s Paul Shand notes that the block masonry walls are covered with black damp-proofing and 2” of black insulation. The stone is anchored to the walls with blackened steel clips, and the joints are not mortared or caulked. The absence of mortar articulates each individual stone, and gives a strong shadowing effect that creates the impression of the stones floating on the surface of the walls.
   The roughly chiseled stone is set in a 24” to 36” ashlar pattern with random vertical coursing; no vertical joint is set within 4” of a joint in neighboring courses. The visual result is a solid, dry-stack appearance reminiscent of the huge blocks of stone found in ancient walls of the Old City of Jerusalem; you don’t realize it’s a skin unless you inspect it closely.
   The stone is a moisture shield rather than a barrier. Moisture entering the system through the joints falls along the cavity, hits flashing at the lower course, and flows to the ground as in a rainscreen system.
   The warm palette of the stone and the crisp geometry of the form capture the golden hue of walls in Israel. At the same time, every chisel mark creates a different subtlety of color, unveiling the inner unique qualities of each stone. To enhance the visual appeal of the coloration, zinc is used exclusively on the exterior fittings.
   Westlake noted that designing a modern museum is often problematic.
   “Because exhibits must be protected from light and the environment, a museum doesn’t want openings,” he says. “With no decoration from piercing, museum walls are often vast, uninteresting planes. At the Maltz Museum this effect is increased by the rectangular design.”
   To provide interest, vertical reveals suggesting scroll niches are spaced along the northeast corner. The niches are lined in zinc, and illuminated with hidden fiber-optics, creating candles of light on the façade. The stone appears as a veil shielding a light within, a shroud for precious contents.
   The light provides a sense of depth, a promise of layers contained within. A crystal band of windows in the south wall provides further interest.
   Manipulating stone in texture and depth added to the interest of the entire site. A ‘Wall of Remembrance’ – a massive stone berm that will eventually include a Memorial Garden honoring the survivors of the Holocaust and Jewish war veterans, embraces the building. 
   The Jerusalem limestone of the berm wall has been fine-chiseled giving the wall a lighter coloration; matching grout adds to the lightness. The wall begins on a rise at the street level, which is level to the roof of the museum; at this point, it’s almost horizontal to the ground plane.
   As it curves along the road and down the entrance drive, the wall gently rises to a vertical plane and decreases in height as it tapers toward the museum entrance. The wall and the earthworks it encloses serve as both visual and sound barriers.
   The exit portal on the east is of dry stacked limestone, evoking the rubble effect of antiquity, as expressed in the Hebrew and English phrase Generation to Generation rendered in zinc signage near the door.
   At this portal, a small patio with quartzite strips leads to a grassy courtyard linking the Museum to the Temple and Education Center (which were already on the site) and to the parking area. The Brazilian quartzite was selected by SPS’s Shand for its hardness and similarity in color to the limestone.
   For Westlake’s Reed. the satisfaction of a project is the relationship with clients. “No building is created in a vacuum, but embodies goals, aspirations, dreams, ” he says.
   The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, a tangible result of that, is an ideal, well-executed project in stone.

Project Developer: The Malrite Co., Cleveland
Architect: Westlake Reed Leskosky, Cleveland
Masonry/Installation: SPS & Associates, Hudson, Ohio

M.W. Penn is a free-lance writer with extensive experience covering the use of stone in architecture.

This article first appeared in the February 2006 print edition of Stone Business. ©2006 Western Business Media Inc.