Overview
Touro Synagogue was built for Newport’s congregation during the city’s eighteenth-century commercial growth. Designed by Peter Harrison, the building adapted familiar Sephardic spatial arrangements to British colonial architecture. Its central reading platform, surrounding seating, galleries, and ark supported a liturgy connected with the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Atlantic. The congregation’s members participated in commerce linking North America, the Caribbean, and Europe, including economic systems entangled with slavery. The synagogue later became a national symbol of religious liberty, but its fullest history joins architecture, migration, commerce, worship, and changing American memory.
