Billion-Dollar Question

Since war's end, church-building in the U.S. has been on the boom, notably on the Pacific Coast and in the Southwest. A typical example is Houston, Texas, which had 335 churches in 1936, has 515 today and more abuilding. But the boom is nationwide; Protestant denominations alone have more than $1 billion worth of new construction planned. Architecturally, what are U.S. churches making of the opportunity?

Little if anything, reports ARCHITECTURAL FORUM in its current issue, out last week. Church architecture is in a rut, and has been for a generation. "Almost without exception," says the FORUM, "the houses of worship erected in this, country since 1920 could more appropriately have been built in England about the time of Crecy and Agincourt or in colonial America in the reign of George III." And few of the new churches will represent any advance. Among the reasons: traditionalism among laity and clergy (a preference for watered-down Gothic and imitation Colonial), and the failure of architects to offer fresh, contemporary alternatives.

Expendable Churches. But, says the FORUM, there is hope on the horizon. A handful of moderns are trying to restore to church architecture the pioneering role it once played. Their tentative answers to the problem (see picture supplement) may not seem equally inspiring to all worshipers, but they do suggest some brand-new approaches.

One common denominator is a simplicity forced by economy, since, as the FORUM points out, "the church of the future . . . will have to be regarded as expendable. New York is currently witnessing the impact of present-day economy on the traditional concept of the church: the dramatic demolition of the Collegiate Reformed Church of St. Nicholas, which Frank Lloyd Wright declared the finest in New York. Located on one of Fifth Avenue's costliest and most coveted corners [48th Street], it will make way for an office building."

Bare but Not Barren. Like the great churches of the past, the new buildings designed by such brilliant moderns as Wright, the Saarinens, Antonin Raymond and Pietro Belluschi are "functional" in that they use the latest structural materials and techniques in such a way as to emphasize rather than conceal the way they were built. As Architect Belluschi tells prospective clients, he loves the Gothic far too much to design a cheap imitation that conceals a steel frame behind an ivied stone facade.

Yet the problem of building a functional church involves more than letting the construction materials show. The function of a church, after all, "is primarily one affecting the spiritual and emotional side of man." In other words, modern "expendable" churches may be bare but not barren, small but not confining. What the architects must achieve in new ways, concludes the FORUM: "Dignity, loftiness and reverence."

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