Church Center

PROGRESS REPORT No. 6

The Church Center, including more than seven acres of open plazas, will combine beauty with practicality.

New vistas showing The Mother Church will be opened up. The Extension will gain an additional major entrance. The front entrance of the Publishing House will become fully visible for the first time. There will be a reflecting pool and fountain, flower gardens, trees and shrubbery, driveways and walks—all part of the Center's basic design.

The reflecting pool, running nearly the whole length of the Huntington Avenue side of the Center, will have an important role in the overall plan. Almost every building in the Center will be mirrored in it. In particular, the Original Edifice, highlighted in the middle of the complex, will be visible from every angle in reflected images in the pool.

Though measuring 700 feet long and more than 100 feet wide, the pool will reach a depth of no more than two feet. It will be constructed with a number of self-cleaning and protective safety elements. Its one and a half million gallons of water will be circulating constantly. Pipes will carry this water to serve the cooling and condensing needs of air-conditioning equipment for the Center's new buildings.

Beneath the reflecting pool and its nearby flower gardens there will be an underground garage. Having an area of nearly four acres, it will be capable of holding about 550 cars. It will be used for those attending church services, lectures, and meetings, as well as by visitors and employees during the week.

It will have two entrance ramps from the streets, one next to the new Administration Building and the other behind the new Sunday School. Passageways from the garage will connect all buildings in the Center, and there will be an escalator to the rotunda floor of the Extension.

Driveways extending through the plaza areas will enable cars to drop off passengers at the entrances to any of the buildings in the Center. These driveways, combining with other features of the plaza areas, will ensure a smooth traffic flow. They will provide fullest possible access from outside the Center to buildings within it. At the same time they will link all its buildings in a single harmonious plan.

A broad terraced walkway will wind uninterrupted from the front entrance of the Publishing House to the Administration Building. It will completely encircle the Extension and the Original Edifice. Then it will continue at a 40-foot width along the front of the Colonnade Building. Finally it will fan out in a graceful curve around a large circular fountain at the end of the reflecting pool.

Beyond the pool there will be an acre and a half of trees and flower gardens. A second walkway system will stretch through these from the Administration Building to the Sunday School. Extensive lighting along all walkways will help illumine the entire Center after dark.

The Church Center will thus offer interest and inspiration to all who walk through it or past it, whether by day or night.

The next Church Center report will be published in the Sentinel of June 24, 1967.

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