CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST, SOUTHPORT
Sunday School Building
The first part of this building to be completed is the Sunday school, the designs of which are shown in the accompanying photographs. Before examining these in detail it may be well to refer to the plan of the main building to which it is attached, for otherwise we should not be able to appreciate the manner in which the relationship between the church and school have found architectural expression. A s usual we find the hall or auditorium symmetrically disposed in front of the platform.
Other elements in the plan are equally logical and well arranged. A large entrance portico contains two doorways into the church and corridors from either side of the vestibule circle round the main hall, giving access to lavatories and cloakrooms for men and women respectively. On the left hand the corridor enters a loggia providing a secondary access to the church, and then leads to the two readers’ rooms that are in direct communication with the platform; on the right the other corridor merges into a large foyer, from which we enter the lobby to
the Sunday school. This is a hall of ample dimensions, and has a second entrance with separate cloakrooms and lavatories for boys and girls. Four small classrooms lead out of the school room, and are screened from the latter by glazed partitions. All parts of the building are very well lit and ventilated.
The last-mentioned entrance doorway, very deeply recessed, is here illustrated. This porch takes the form of a plain rectangular aperture. The jambs of the brickwork are in bond composed of alternate layers of two stretchers, and layers of half and third brick, while the ‘‘bressamer’’ which spans the opening is
also 18 inches in its narrower dimension, and is in vertical courses alternating between two stretchers and one stretcher with half bricks each side. Obviously the arrangement has been very carefully studied with the object of obtaining a definite æsthetic result. Yet while the bond of the vertical and of the horizontal members is to a certain extent differentiated, there is a lack of expressiveness in their equality of girth, the jambs being 18 inches wide and the “bressamer” 18 inches deep, while, granted that there is a concrete lintel behind the brickwork of the latter, and every
architect knows this lintel exists, it seems a little unhappy that a bond originally devised for horizontal courses should have been placed vertically, as if the designer were incapable of recognising the constructional impropriety of this arrangement. The doors themselves are of interest inasmuch as they are formed
of single panels with glazing bars set diagonally. No attempt has here been made to effect a formal differentiation between the upper and lower portions of the door except by the broader lower rail which provides a base to the composition; otherwise the large panels are capable of being turned upside down indiscriminately, and thus seem to lack a consciousness of their position. The architect, however, was probably anxious to depart from the somewhat hackneyed convention according to which a door is divided horizontally into two or more panels of unequal vertical dimension, the lower panel being generally the shorter and surmounted by a middle rail in alignment with the handle of the door, which is thus incorporated.
Internally the Sunday school hall presents the appearance of spaciousness, and its white ceiling and walls are luminous and cleanly. It is noticeable that the heads of the lower windows are on different level from the tops of the doors to the entrance lobby and classrooms, and in consequence the formal patterns of the walls of the school room seem lacking in homogeneity. Whether it could have been possible to bring these features into æsthetic relationship by. means of panels or “ventilators” over the doors, or whether
a scheme of decoration by means of framed pictures would help to establish the desirable accord between the various wall openings, is an interesting problem. The walls above the level of the two lower portions of the room at either end are harmoniously enclosed within a moulded string which takes up the cills of the three ‘‘attic’’ windows and relates these to the
vertical dimension of the bressamers stretching across the hall. The electric-light fittings are of elegant design, yet are treated as ‘‘incidentals’’ in the com
positions, the ceiling being in no way prepared for their reception. The general impression of the
(Continued on page 926. )
ENTRANCE DETAIL.
w. Braxton Sinclair, F. R. I. B. A., Architect.
Sunday School Building
The first part of this building to be completed is the Sunday school, the designs of which are shown in the accompanying photographs. Before examining these in detail it may be well to refer to the plan of the main building to which it is attached, for otherwise we should not be able to appreciate the manner in which the relationship between the church and school have found architectural expression. A s usual we find the hall or auditorium symmetrically disposed in front of the platform.
Other elements in the plan are equally logical and well arranged. A large entrance portico contains two doorways into the church and corridors from either side of the vestibule circle round the main hall, giving access to lavatories and cloakrooms for men and women respectively. On the left hand the corridor enters a loggia providing a secondary access to the church, and then leads to the two readers’ rooms that are in direct communication with the platform; on the right the other corridor merges into a large foyer, from which we enter the lobby to
the Sunday school. This is a hall of ample dimensions, and has a second entrance with separate cloakrooms and lavatories for boys and girls. Four small classrooms lead out of the school room, and are screened from the latter by glazed partitions. All parts of the building are very well lit and ventilated.
The last-mentioned entrance doorway, very deeply recessed, is here illustrated. This porch takes the form of a plain rectangular aperture. The jambs of the brickwork are in bond composed of alternate layers of two stretchers, and layers of half and third brick, while the ‘‘bressamer’’ which spans the opening is
also 18 inches in its narrower dimension, and is in vertical courses alternating between two stretchers and one stretcher with half bricks each side. Obviously the arrangement has been very carefully studied with the object of obtaining a definite æsthetic result. Yet while the bond of the vertical and of the horizontal members is to a certain extent differentiated, there is a lack of expressiveness in their equality of girth, the jambs being 18 inches wide and the “bressamer” 18 inches deep, while, granted that there is a concrete lintel behind the brickwork of the latter, and every
architect knows this lintel exists, it seems a little unhappy that a bond originally devised for horizontal courses should have been placed vertically, as if the designer were incapable of recognising the constructional impropriety of this arrangement. The doors themselves are of interest inasmuch as they are formed
of single panels with glazing bars set diagonally. No attempt has here been made to effect a formal differentiation between the upper and lower portions of the door except by the broader lower rail which provides a base to the composition; otherwise the large panels are capable of being turned upside down indiscriminately, and thus seem to lack a consciousness of their position. The architect, however, was probably anxious to depart from the somewhat hackneyed convention according to which a door is divided horizontally into two or more panels of unequal vertical dimension, the lower panel being generally the shorter and surmounted by a middle rail in alignment with the handle of the door, which is thus incorporated.
Internally the Sunday school hall presents the appearance of spaciousness, and its white ceiling and walls are luminous and cleanly. It is noticeable that the heads of the lower windows are on different level from the tops of the doors to the entrance lobby and classrooms, and in consequence the formal patterns of the walls of the school room seem lacking in homogeneity. Whether it could have been possible to bring these features into æsthetic relationship by. means of panels or “ventilators” over the doors, or whether
a scheme of decoration by means of framed pictures would help to establish the desirable accord between the various wall openings, is an interesting problem. The walls above the level of the two lower portions of the room at either end are harmoniously enclosed within a moulded string which takes up the cills of the three ‘‘attic’’ windows and relates these to the
vertical dimension of the bressamers stretching across the hall. The electric-light fittings are of elegant design, yet are treated as ‘‘incidentals’’ in the com
positions, the ceiling being in no way prepared for their reception. The general impression of the
(Continued on page 926. )
ENTRANCE DETAIL.
w. Braxton Sinclair, F. R. I. B. A., Architect.