The Harpsichord Synagogue.

Today's Blip is another piece of personal history.  This building housed the workshop of the late harpsichord maker, Eric Herz.  Eric was from Cologne in Germany, and after Kristallnacht in 1938 was able to flee the Nazis and join his sister in Palestine.  From there he made his way slowly by way of Canada to Boston.  
For three years during the mid-1980s, this is where I came every day to learn the harpsichord trade.  Eric acquired this building, a disused synagogue, in the 1960s.  It seems entirely fitting that he, of all people, should have bought this place and given it a new life as a harpsichord workshop.   He closed in the upper floor which had previously been the gallery for the female members of the congregation, and turned that into his living quarters.  On the main floor was the work area where the harpsichords were painted, decorated and turned from empty cabinets into musical instruments.  This was my domain.  The basement level was the cabinet shop and the empire of Harry, the eight-fingered, Greek/Albanian cabinet maker. He spoke a dialect which we on the upper level called "Grenglish".  The raw lumber came in the door at street level on the right.  Assembled cases found their way up the narrow, twisty steps inside to the finishing floor and, when the time was right, the completed harpsichords descended those steep front stairs on the broad shoulders of the specialist harpsichord mover, Martin, and his helpers.  On several summer days in 1987, my co-worker, Robert, and I painted those stairs beige, and the side pieces in that brick red color.  I wonder if that is still the original coat of paint!  The bracket above the door was made by Eric's son, Jonathan, who is a blacksmith.  There used to be a paneled sign hanging there announcing proudly, "Eric Herz, Harpsichord Maker, established 1954".  As I took the photograph I noticed that Jonathan had included an "H" in the bracket.  The business closed in the early 1990s and the building was sold.  Eric, Harry and Martin are all gone, and the memories of that fine building, standing almost unchanged, and the life it contained, reside with me and a few other former apprentices living around New England.