Article July 9, 1910 Issue

AMONG THE CHURCHES

A new item is today [June 26] added to Philadelphia's splendid total of handsome churches, when the congregation of First Church of Christ, Scientist, which for some years past has been holding its services in the old Beth Eden Baptist Church, at Broad and Spruce streets, opens its new building in West Philadelphia. Situated on a large lot, on the south side of Walnut street, just west of Fortieth, it has taken its place in the heart of one of the most attractive residence sections of the city, where the characteristic green of lawns and trees is especially marked, and it has risen there materially to add to the beauty of the locality.

The clear white of its stuccoed walls, with their broad windows and many generous doorways topped with the redtiled roofs, which rise as if by terraces to the wide, low dome, forms a striking and distinctly pleasing effect. Architecturally speaking, the general style is Italian renaissance in its earlier period, but an observing eye sees everywhere about the building, in the arches of doors and windows, for instance, and in the wall-columns which divide its northern front, lines purely Ionic in their simplicity and dignity. The architects have, as it were, wedded these two elements in bringing together a structure whose great size—the auditorium alone seats twelve hundred—is lost in the propriety of its proportions, and whose somewhat severe beauty, taken in its entirety, is such that one is almost surprised at the subsequent discoveries of its charming elegance in the lesser details.

The building has been fifteen months, to a day, in being brought to completion, ground having been broken on March 25, 1909. In the early stages of the work it was discovered that the lot did not offer proper "footings," or foundation structure for an edifice of this size and weight. To meet this problem, concrete piling was driven all over the surface of such part of the land as would bear the church, the piles being sunk anywhere from a dozen or fourteen feet to more than twenty. It was an expensive and a somewhat tedious process, delaying the work probably six weeks, but today the situation is the best that could be desired. The cost of the church is one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.

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THE LECTURES
July 9, 1910
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