Liebenberg and Kaplan (L&K) was a Minneapolis architectural firm founded in 1923 by Jacob J. Liebenberg and Seeman I. Kaplan. Over a fifty-year period, L&K became one of the Twin Cities' most successful architectural firms, best known for designing/redesigning movie theaters. The firm also designed hospitals, places of worship, commercial and institutional buildings, country clubs, prestigious homes, radio and television stations, hotels, and apartment buildings. After designing Temple Israel and the Granada Theater in Minneapolis, the firm began specializing in acoustics and theater design and went on to plan the construction and/or renovation of more than 200 movie houses throughout Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Architectural records, original drawings, and plans for some 2,500 Liebenberg and Kaplan projects are available for public use at the Northwest Architectural Archives.
Partners
Architect Jacob "Jack" Liebenberg (born July 4, 1893), a Milwaukee native of German Jewish descent, arrived in Minneapolis in 1912 to work on construction of the Leamington Hotel. After learning that the University of Minnesota was starting an architecture school, he applied, was admitted, and became a member of the School of Architecture's first graduating class in 1916. He received a scholarship to attend Harvard University, where he obtained his master's degree in 1917. The French government awarded Liebenberg the Prix de Rome, a grant for a period of architectural study in Rome, but because of the outbreak of World War I, he was unable to take advantage of this scholarship. After serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps, he returned to the University of Minnesota as an instructor in the School of Architecture.
One of his students was Seeman Kaplan (born June 5, 1894), a son of Russian Jewish immigrants, who had worked as a draftsman and served as an officer in the Engineer Corps during World War I. The two became friends and Liebenberg eventually married Seeman's sister, Raleigh Kaplan. A Minneapolis native, Kaplan graduated with honors in architecture from the University of Minnesota in 1918.
While Liebenberg was teaching at the University of Minnesota, he was working for architectural firms such as the D.C. Bennett firm in Minneapolis. The William Wigginton house in the Tangletown neighborhood of Minneapolis is an example of Liebenberg's work for Bennett. The prairie box house was built in 1919. In 1923, Liebenberg and Kaplan formed a partnership, and over a fifty-year period the firm known as Liebenberg & Kaplan designed significant homes and buildings throughout the Twin Cities and beyond, many of which still stand. Kaplan focused on the business aspects of the firm and engineering details of their projects, while Liebenberg oversaw design. For the last twenty years of Liebenberg's career, Joel Glotter was also a partner in the firm.
In its early years, L&K was met with anti-Semitism, which was well-entrenched in the Minneapolis business community at the time, but in 1923 the firm was commissioned to design the remodel of the Arion Theater, one of the city's oldest movie houses. Many theaters at the time were owned by Jews; the Arion was owned by Louis Rubenstein and Abe Kaplan, who was Seeman Kaplan's brother.
Commercial design
The Minnesota Hotel, which stood at Washington and Second Avenues in Minneapolis from 1924 to 1963, was an early L&K project. Many other commercial designs followed, including several hospitals throughout the state; among them were St. Olaf Hospital in Austin (1939, 1954–55), Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis (1951), and a portion of North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale (1962), as well as other hospitals throughout the state.
Places of worship
The firm's first for a high-profile commission was the design of Temple Israel (1928) in the Lowry Hill district of Minneapolis. Organized in 1878, the congregation had moved to the site in 1920 and in 1926 hired L&K to design a new synagogue on the site. An outstanding feature of the neoclassical revival–style building is the 950-seat main sanctuary, which became known for its superior acoustics.
L&K later designed a number places of worship in the Twin Cities, including Beth El Synagogue (1926) and a synagogue for the Adath Jeshurun Congregation (1927), both in Minneapolis, as well as the Moderne style Jewish Educational Center attached to the Temple of Aaron in St. Paul (1930). The Adath Jeshurun synagogue had a seating capacity of more than 1,000 and was the first synagogue to have a chapel; the structure is still standing and is currently home to First Universalist Church.