Temple Beth El

Rising from a low hill behind a screen of pines along Telegraph Road, Temple Beth El is Yamasaki at his most soulful. The congregation is Michigan’s oldest Jewish community, founded in Detroit in 1850 and a founding member of the Union for Reform Judaism; this 1973 building is its fourth home, and the architect answered that history with the oldest sanctuary form of all — a soaring concrete-and-aluminum tent, modeled on the biblical Tent of Meeting. Sloped concrete “tent poles” hold up the great curved roof, and a ring of clear glass at the base makes the whole canopy appear to hover above the worshippers, sunlight and landscape slipping in underneath.

Inside, treasures traveled with the congregation from its Albert Kahn-designed Woodward Avenue temple, including the stained glass and the ark. It’s an active house of worship, not a museum, so visits mean respect and timing — but even from Telegraph, that silhouette stops traffic. It completes the arc that starts at McGregor and the University Auditorium: the campus experiments, grown into a sanctuary.