For its sixth home, the members of the Conservative congregation Shaarey Zedek turned to Detroit's premier industrial architect, Kahn, who had already produced a monumental temple building for their Reform coreligionists at Temple Beth El (
WN85). Kahn was influenced by Cleveland's and Chicago's up-to-date Romanesque Revival synagogues and used that style for this polychrome round-arched edifice; the triple entrance is through a colonnetted arcade. Inside the sanctuary, which has been sensitively altered, are impressive wooden trusses, twin colonnades, and an elaborately decorated ark wall. Completed despite lawsuits and the Great Depression, the building is a testimony to the success and religious commitment of Jews, and later, of African Americans in Detroit, who acquired this former temple for their church in 1962.