When Did American Synagogues Get So Big?

Stuck indoors for many months now, I find myself thinking a lot about space, especially large-scale communal spaces like the cavernous, auditorium-like sanctuary of the postwar suburban American synagogue. Back in the day, I looked askance at the way it placed a premium on scale rather than intimacy, highlighting theatricality at the expense of community. The modern American synagogue of the 1950s and '60s, it seemed to me, had taken a wrong turn.