“American Christian Science Architecture and its Influence”

Mary Baker Eddy Library, The. “American Christian Science Architecture and its Influence.” Released 16 June 2011.

As a former Fellow of the Mary Baker Eddy Library, Dr. Paul Ivey turned his research into this article, surveying the architectural styles of some of the most notable Christian Science churches in America and Europe, and the famous architects who designed them. Ivey begins with the original 1894 Romanesque Mother Church in Boston and its 1906 much larger Renaissance classical Extension. Most Christian Science churches built between 1897 and 1925 emulated the Extension’s classical style which conveyed a rational spirituality and, for a rapidly growing church, a progressive respectability. This classical style also reflected a trend away from ornamentation with traditional Christian images, such as doves or lambs, to a focus on the words in the Bible and Eddy’s writings that were proclaimed on church walls. It was felt that the earlier “figuration and even conventional symbols took away from the abstract and direct influence of thinking through the unmediated sacred Word.” But Ivey also gives many examples of Christian Science church buildings with original designs that broke the classical mold. Ivey sees these more original designs as reflections of the “democratic and local traditions of the individual congregations,” their buildings being “the chief visible proclamation of Christian Science in their own local communities.”

Read this article on The Mary Baker Eddy Library website.

See also annotations:

Bernard Maybeck at Principia College: The Art and Craft of Building by Robert M. Craig

“Material Expression and Materialism in Mary Baker Eddy’s Boston Churches: How Architecture and Gender Compromised Mind.” By Jeanne Halgren Kilde

“Prayers in Stone: Christian Science Architecture in the United States, 1894-1930.” by Paul Eli Ivey

“Christian Science Architecture in the American City: The Triumph of the Classical Style.” By Paul Eli Ivey

“Architecture of the Christian Science [sic].” by Sally Lessiter