H eadlines
The gorgeous reading room of the E.T. Roux Library building is now used for classroom
lectures. The desks and some furnishings are original.

The impressive skylight as seen from the
interior of the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel is a
prominent feature of this large building.

The Usonian House was designed to
be a typical faculty home for the campus.

One was built in 2013 using Wright’s plans.

The built-in furniture and thousands of
translucent colored glass plugs in the walls
are typical Wright signatures.

Esplanades, or covered walkways, link the entire complex of Wright buildings on the
campus. Totaling more than a mile in length, their supports and trimmings were specified
by Wright to mimic the orange grove that originally stood here.

The view from inside one of the Wright-designed esplanades that link campus buildings
is quite impressive and very different from the outside view. They are well-suited to the
climate and blend seamlessly with the rest of the architecture.

Jewish Lakeland
ALTHOUGH FLORIDA SOUTHERN College is
nominally a Methodist-affiliated institution, it has
students of many creeds, including some Jews. Since
it is located in Lakeland, Jews associated with or
visiting the campus can find Jewish life in Lakeland
and Tampa.

While a few Jews may have lived in and around
Polk County before 1900, the current community
traces its roots to Cy Wolfson’s arrival in 1909. In
the following decades, Lakeland developed a small
but active Jewish community that continues to
function today
By the mid-1920s, local Jews began to hold prayer
services, first in private homes and then in rented
facilities, and they began to organize religious
school classes not long after. While lay members led
most religious services, they received monthly visits
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM from Rabbi L. Elliot Grafman of Tampa, who also
assisted with religious education. As Jews continued
to migrate to the area, Lakeland emerged as the
regional center of Jewish life. Between 1932 and
1934, a small group of 16 families purchased a small
building and formally organized as the Lakeland
Jewish Alliance.

The Jewish community of Lakeland and Polk
County grew and become more organized in the
late 1930s and early 1940s. The alliance changed
its name to Temple Emanuel and began the search
for a full-time rabbi, hiring Rabbi Jack Friedman in
1943. World War II brought several Jewish military
service members to the area.

The Jewish community of Lakeland and Polk
County was, for the most part, well accepted in
the mid-20th century, but local Jews did face social
JEWISH EXPONENT
barriers in the 1950s and 1960s.

Temple Emanuel’s run as the sole synagogue in
Polk County ended in 1982 when a handful of young
Jewish families organized Temple Beth Shalom, a
Reform congregation based in Winter Haven.

Polk County’s Jewish population did not sustain
its mid-20th-century growth into the 1970s.

Whereas Temple Emanuel had approximately
250 member families in 1956, a 1979 newspaper
article referred to a membership of “about 200”
households. Despite changes, Polk County’s Jewish population
remained relatively stable, with an estimated 1,000
Jews in the area in the mid-1990s. As of 2019, both
Temple Emanuel and Beth Shalom hold regular
services, and there is also a Chabad Center. l
— Jeffrey and Virginia Orenstein
DECEMBER 23, 2021
11