In the second half of the 19th century the Lorchs took over the predominance among the Lorsch Jewish families from the Mainzers, many of whose descendants emigrated to Mannheim, Frankfurt and to America. Even before the death of Jonas Mainzer (1835 – 1888), Simon Lorch (1842 – 1913) became community head in the 1880s. Simon Lorch had married his niece Mina Wolf, the elder daughter of his sister Theresa. Her husband Gottschall Wolf had died young. Simon took over Wolf’s business house next to the synagogue. The property with the synagogue had been owned by the Jewish community for about 150 years at that time. The prayer room was on the 1st floor, downstairs lived the salaried teachers. In the basement there was a groundwater mikvah. In 1884 the old building was demolished and a new synagogue made of stone was built. The master builder was Franz Anton Klein (1847 – 1894), a teacher of Heinrich Metzendorf. Klein was married to Mathilde Kilian from Lorch. Lorch was responsible for the construction on behalf of the community. Thus, even before the larger communities of Bensheim (1891) and Heppenheim (1901), the town had a representative synagogue made of stone, the style of which seems to have been strongly inspired by the eclectic facade of the New Synagogue in Darmstadt.