Tabernacle to Temple, The Christian Science Building Boom 1895-1925: The Triumph of the Classical Style

Christian Science, as a new American religious movement, began a period of intense growth around the turn of this century. Due to this growth and the solidification of Christian Science beliefs and practice, the church began to build impressive temples for worship, many of them in the classical style. Many nationally-known architects, some of them Christian Scientists, were hired to build these large and expensive edifices. Several of these architects, along with church officials, began to publicly debate the merits of particular styles of architecture to represent the new sect. These debates intersected with notions of architecture as promotor of social and moral progress, ideas loosely construed around City Beautiful precepts. Christian Science building was specifically influenced by the 1893 World's Fair architecture. Solon Spencer Beman proposed the classical style as indicative of the theological ideas of Christian Science. Elmer Grey argued that creative ideas suggested by Louis Sullivan were more appropriate for the new religion. The commodious church edifices are a last legacy of an ideology that gave style a particular religious meaning in the wider urban environment. The dissertation is an archivally-based social historical narrative centered around church building in Boston, Chicago and the Midwest, New York, and California. Understanding the specificity and history of these stylistic choices contributes to architectural discourse by showing the relevance of classical Beaux Arts architecture as an articulation of social ideas and rhetorical strategies of an indigenous American religion at an important period of national growth. It suggests ways in which both interiors and exteriors of early Christian Science edifices could be defined and defended by apologists and polemicists.