Piety in Brick

The costliest modern church in the world, planned by Europe's most famous modern architect and his son, is going up across the street from a Victorian city hall and a conventional Carnegie library in Columbus, Ind. (population: 11,738; county seat of Bartholomew County).

"It is a simply designed church for a simple people," says Finland's great expatriate, Eliel Saarinen--but it will cover an entire city block and cost some $600,000 (its equivalent in Gothic would cost an estimated 30% more). When finished early in 1942 it will house the religious activities of 1,500 Disciples of Christ in two severe, flat-roofed units joined by a two-story bridge across a sunken terrace and a 140-by-120 reflecting pool. And perhaps its sheer 166-foot tower will beacon religious architecture back into the advancing stream of history.

Significantly, the past two centuries have been almost the only period in history when religion was not the principal patron of architecture. The low point in church design coincided roughly with the high point of Victorian morality, but even the recent revival has been almost entirely an eclectic re-creation of Gothic, Byzantine, or Christopher Wren inspirations. Only in the past few years, with Frank Lloyd Wright's Community Church for Kansas City, the Albert Hoffmann-designed St. Peter Claver Mission (Negro Catholic) at Montclair, N. J., the modern Catholic churches of Barry Byrne, a sprinkling of others, has the Church moved to resume its ancient place as the patron of creative architecture.

Reason the new Tabernacle Church of Christ will be completely free of debt is its chief donor: massive, 74-year-old Columbus Banker William Glanton Irwin, director of a dozen corporations, one of those never-publicized U. S. millionaires.

With his fellow members of the building committee, Industrialist Irwin made no hasty move towards modernism. Fundamentalist in thinking as well as in faith, they first set down their desires in a joint credo of architectural aims and religious belief:

"We shall be very much disappointed if our new church turns out to be no more than a building which will house large numbers and accommodate a variety of activities. . . . You may ask why we . . . do not spend the same money in Christian work and arrange to worship in less impressive surroundings. . . . Great buildings dominate and influence the lives of all who live near them. A church which embodies and illustrates the truths of Christianity should be a monument in which the affection and aspiration of many generations of Christians are centred. That is why we choose to spend our money in this way. . . ."

In choosing as architects dapper, apple-cheeked, Finnish-born Eliel Saarinen and his broad-shouldered, twinkling son Eero, the Tabernacle Church got a pair of modernists whom even conservative architects respect. Best known for his rose-granite railway station at Helsinki, Eliel Saarinen recently won (with Son Eero and Son-in-law Robert Swanson) the national competition for the $2,500,000 Smithsonian Gallery of Art, which, if built, will be Washington's first modern Government building. Now president of Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, Architect Saarinen exerts a widening influence over U. S. building.

The Saarinens have given their block-square plan variety and privacy by devoting more than half the plot to a terrace sunk eight feet below street level. Its loggia, mosaic pavements, shrubs and flower beds will provide a pleasant setting for many a church supper, concert and pageant. Its pool will be used for public ice skating in winter, will help keep the church cool in summer. On this level the east and west wings contain an auditorium seating 500, reception room, kitchen, Bible School classrooms. The upper levels of the brick and Indiana limestone structure contain the light, airy church, a chapel, offices, schoolrooms, two baptistries.

Unusual as they are, the Saarinens' blueprints were unanimously approved when submitted to the congregation last spring with an explanatory booklet. Most interesting section: the questions asked the architects, with their answers. Typical exchange:

Q. "Is this design particularly appropriate to our church?"

A. "As your church has been based upon the fundamentals of Christianity, so the new architectural thought is endeavoring to build upon the fundamental principles of architecture."

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