Article October 19, 1899 Issue

Among the Churches

Plans have been furnished for the new temple of the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, which is to be erected at the southeast corner of Washington Boulevard and Leavitt Street. The edifice when completed will be one of the most beautiful of its kind in the city. It will be spacious, comfortable, even elegant in furnishings, and in all will present an effect of purity and simplicity particularly expressive of the principles for which the building is to stand and the uses to which it is to be put. The building will have a base course of gray granite, above which the walls will be of a delicately colored, dull-finished enameled brick, the cornices and the architectural features being of enameled terra-cotta of a creamy white color, and the columns at the main entrance monoliths of white marble. The ground for the foundation will be broken as soon as the contracts can be let. Work on the superstructure will be directed with all care and not hurried, as it is expected to take fully a year to finish it and have it ready for the pewholders. The size of the building over. all will be 1 10 by 95 feet. The main auditorium as designed is to be 82 by 104 feet. The seating capacity will be between thirteen and fourteen hundred people.

The exterior of the building will present an effect of classic simplicity, the forms throughout chaste and restrained even to the point of severity, the color soft, mellow, and varied, as the surfaces vary from a broad, simple wall to a delicate bit of fanciful detail. The four walls rise straight and unbroken to the main cornice in the form of a square, above which are the clerestory walls, supporting the roof, which is in the form of a cross. This form, the cross within a square, is the motif of the design throughout; the auditorium, with its vaulted ceilings, being in the form of a cross, and the four corners of the square being occupied by the staircases.

No trace of the ancient styles of ecclesiastical architecture appears in the design, the effect being rather to express the modern auditorium with its wide-spanning, vaulted ceilings, in a manner lofty and inspiring. The lower floor is to be occupied by a large and roomy lobby, such as the foyer of a theater, supplied with fireplaces and comfortable seats. Out of this foyer five broad staircases lead upward into the auditorium, which, with its widearched ceilings and great semi-elliptical windows, will give an effect of extreme breadth and simplicity. Here again color is to play an important part, and the intention is to decorate the walls and the ceilings in soft blues, sea green, and cream white, which, when toned through the opalescent glow of the windows, will give to the interior an effect at once restful, quiet, and luminous.

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