Touro Synagogue in Newport: the oldest Jewish building in America

Newport in Rhode Island suited Jews for a reason written into the colony's charter: Roger Williams founded it on "liberty of conscience", and there was no religious test. The congregation Yeshuat Israel formed from Sephardim who came by way of Curaçao and Barbados, and grew rich on the sea trade.

Peter Harrison, the finest architect in the colonies, designed the building without a fee. From outside it is a restrained Georgian house bearing no sign at all—the way one builds where tolerance is young and no one wishes to test it. Inside stand twelve columns for the twelve tribes, the bimah in the middle of the hall after the Sephardi custom, and a trapdoor in the floor beside it: tradition ties it to the memory of the anusim, though a cellar is the likelier explanation. It was dedicated on 2 December 1763, the first day of Hanukkah; the hazan Isaac Touro preached, and the synagogue carries his name.

The Revolution ruined Newport: the British occupied the town, trade moved to New York and Philadelphia, and by the 1820s the congregation was gone—the building stood locked for nearly eighty years. Money left by Touro's descendants preserved it, and in 1946 it became a national historic site.