Just inside the bronze doors on Fifth Avenue, under the gallery, with the sanctuary opening ahead: one of the largest synagogue halls in the world, a painted coffered ceiling a hundred feet up, tall windows down both walls and, at the far end, the great arch in gold mosaic round the ark with the eternal light burning in front of it. The New Yorkers hang in the vestibule and in the museum galleries off it, never in the hall; Central Park is across the avenue behind you.
Temple Emanu-El at 1 East 65th Street, on the northeast corner with Fifth Avenue, was built from 1928 to 1929 and consecrated in 1930 for the Reform congregation that began on April 6, 1845. It was designed by Robert D. Kohn, working with Charles Butler and Clarence S. Stein, on the former site of the Mrs. William B. Astor House, and replaced the congregation's 1868 Moorish Revival synagogue at 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue, demolished in 1927. Its load bearing masonry walls carry the steel beams of the roof; the hall seats 2,500, more than St. Patrick's Cathedral, making it one of the largest synagogues in the world. The mosaics are by Hildreth Meière, and the building's museum holds more than 650 pieces from the 14th century to the present.
Source · Temple Emanu-El of New York (1930), Wikipedia ↗
The limestone front on Fifth Avenue with its great recessed arch and arched window over three bronze doors, the vestibule under the gallery, the sanctuary with its coffered ceiling and stained glass, the mosaic arch round the ark, the eternal light, the bimah and the organ pipes, the domed Beth-El Chapel with its Tiffany windows, the Bernard Museum of Judaica, and yellow cabs going down Fifth beside the Central Park wall. Mood: late afternoon, a gold arch and one red light. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.