In 2004 the historic Jewish Community Center building on Madison Street in midtown became Section 8 housing. That’s when its beautiful stained-glass window began to suffer damage.
The window, a multicolored Star of David, was restored in 2017. A protective plexiglass barrier was added. But the plexiglass was stolen (in Stockton the protective barriers need protective barriers) and damage resumed.
Driving by, “I could see where there were some chunks of glass broken,” said Marc Corren, a member of Temple Israel. “It had been vandalized. I realized if I didn’t stop it, it would have been lost.”
That would have been a shame. The window is a gem. Almost five feet wide, it was designed, like the 1928 building itself, by noted Stockton architect Glenn Allen (1868-1943), who designed the Civic Memorial Auditorium and other prominent city buildings. It is made of a rich opalescent glass of a quality not made anymore — glass with the hues of opal, soft, multicolored, and iridescent.
The building of which it is a part is culturally significant. Though a small city, early Stockton was home to three Jewish congregations that practiced three different strains of Judaism in three temples (which is why Stockton comprises three Jewish cemeteries).
“The significance of this Jewish center is it was a place that unified the whole Jewish community,” said Jason Gwasdoff, Temple Israel’s rabbi, adding it was “More of a social club. It was not a place of prayer.”
And the significance of the window, as Gwasdoff said upon its first restoration in 2017, “represents the continuity of the Jewish community all the way from the 1850s to today.”
Corren learned that the building had changed hands and was now owned by Florsheim Homes. He contacted Bob Florsheim of Elk Grove, heir to the Florsheim shoe fortune.
“I said, ‘This is a historic relic of an early California Jewish community, the oldest Jewish Community west of the Rockies. This is part of our heritage. What are you going to do about it?’”
Meeting Corren at the building at 1337 N. Madison St., Florsheim pledged to aid its preservation. He sent workers and a cherry picker. The workers removed the window, crated it, and delivered it to storage at Temple Israel.
On Monday, the window was delivered to Ram Studios, the Stockton studio/home of artisan Tony Ramirez.
“I’m retired, but there’s nobody else in town that does stained-glass work,” said Ramirez, 73, who estimates he has created or repaired 4,500 stained-glass windows in his 50-year career.
The pickup transporting the window backed into Ramirez’s driveway. Three men carefully unloaded it, leaned it against the wall, and uncrated it, pulling away sheets of packing material.
The window emerged.
“That’s a beautiful window,” Ramirez said.
As before the previous restoration, chunks of glass are missing and the “came,” the glass’s lead framework, bent in spots. No big deal, said Ramirez. “It’s been pretty well protected so it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s going to be time consuming but it’s not going to be hard.”
Ramirez will build a custom-fitted table in his basement studio, one on which he can hinge the window so he can flip it over and work on both sides. Restoration should take a week.
Plans call for the window to be fitted into a handsome wooden box, backlit, and hung on an interior wall of Temple Israel. It will be dedicated in memoriam to Corren’s son Nathan, who died last year at age 33.
“It’s just exciting to think this beautiful window will now grace the walls of our temple facility,” Rabbi Gwasdoff said. “We’ll see it and enjoy it every time we walk through the temple.”
Corren: “I think that this is wonderful timing. Not only to put some love into the Jewish community and preserve my son’s memory, to preserve what king David — Solomon’s father — first invented.”
Michael Fitzgerald’s column runs on Wednesdays. On Twitter and Instagram as Stocktonopolis. Email:mfitzgeraldstockton@gmail.com