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Congregation B’nai B’rith was founded in 1861 to serve the needs of Eastern European Jews worshipping in the Ashkenazic tradition. After meeting for five years in the Georgia Hussars’ armory hall on Wright Square, the congregation built a wooden synagogue on the present site, which was replaced in the early twentieth century by the current red brick, Moorish Revival synagogue, characterized by the prominent use of horseshoe arches. A new, modernist synagogue, B’nai B’rith Jacob, was built in 1963 about three miles to the south on Abercorn Street, a move that depopulated the historic district’s Orthodox Jewish community. The vacated building on the present site then served as a church before it became the Student Center of the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2006.