The Suburban Church: Modernism and Community in Postwar America

377 Pages·2015·10.182 MB·English

by  Gretchen Buggeln

THE SUBURBAN CHURCH
Architecture, Landscape, and American Culture Series
Katherine Solomonson and Abigail A. Van Slyck, Series Editors
Medicine by Design: The Architect and the Modern Hospital, 1893– 1943
Annmarie Adams
The Suburban Church: Modernism and Community in Postwar America
Gretchen Buggeln
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Manhood Factories: YMCA Architecture and the Making of Modern Urban Culture
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Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War
David Monteyne
Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America
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Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890– 1915
Jessica Ellen Sewell
194x: Architecture, Planning, and Consumer Culture on the American Home Front
Andrew M. Shanken
A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth,
1890– 1960
Abigail A. Van Slyck
The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States
Carla Yanni
T H E S U B U R B A N
C H U R C H
R
Modernism and Community in
Postwar America
GRETCHEN BUGGELN
Architecture, Landscape, and American Culture Series
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS
MINNEAPOLIS • LONDON
Portions of chapter 2 were previously published in “The Shape of a New Era:
Valparaiso’s Chapel of the Resurrection in Historical Context,” The Cresset (Lent 2010):
6– 14. Portions of chapter 6 were previously published in “Form, Function, and Failure
in Postwar Christian Education Buildings,” in David Morgan, ed., Religion and Material
Culture: The Matter of Belief (New York: Routledge, 2009), 193– 213.
Copyright 2015 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401– 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Buggeln, Gretchen, author.
The suburban church : modernism and community in postwar America /
Gretchen Buggeln.
(Architecture, landscape and American culture series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8166-9495-2 (hc) — isbn 978-0-8166-9496-9 (pb)
1. Protestant church buildings—Middle West—History—20th century.
2. Architecture and society—Middle West—History—20th century.
3. Suburban churches—Middle West.
4. Midcentury modern (Architecture)—Middle West. I. Title.
na5212.5.m63b84 2015
726.50977´09045—dc23 2015031931
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENT S
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction. New Times, New Architecture
Making a Place for Religion in Postwar Suburbia xi
1 The Modern Church Movement 1
2 T he “Form- Givers” of Suburban Religion 29
Three Midwestern Architects
3 F rom Dream to Dedication 55
The Shared Work of Church Building
4 T he A-F rame Church 85
Symbol of an Era
5 T he Suburban Sanctuary 125
A House for the Worshipping Community
6 L iving and Learning as a Suburban Church Family 169
Modern Spaces for Education and Fellowship
7 R eligion, Architecture, and Community in the Celebrated 201
Suburb of Park Forest, Illinois
8 The Afterlife of the Postwar Suburban Church 239
Appendix A. National Council of Churches of Christ List of
Eighteen “Outstanding” New Churches, 1956 265
Appendix B. Statement on Architecture and the Church,
Composed at International Conference on Architecture and
the Church, Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of
Churches, Château de Bossey, Bogis- Bossey, Switzerland, 1959 266
Appendix C. Working List of Churches and Religious Buildings
by Charles Edward Stade 268
Appendix D. List of Churches by Edward Dart 272
Appendix E. List of Churches by Edward Anders Sövik, 1949– 70 273
Notes 275
Sources for Research 313
Index 331
ACKNOWLED GMEN TS
In 2005, during my first year teaching at Valparaiso University, I offered a seminar
called the American Home. While searching for a case study for my students, I
happened on the 1960 house designed for the university president by Chicago
architect Charles E. Stade. My students and I discovered that Stade designed our
1959 chapel and several other buildings for a major campus expansion, yet, much
to our surprise, next to nothing was known about him. In 2006, Valparaiso granted
me a summer travel stipend to find out more. While visiting Stade parish churches
in Midwestern suburbs, I encountered many people who had spent much time in
his buildings but had never heard of him. I asked questions about the founding
years of these congre gations and had the opportunity to meet people who had
served on postwar building committees. My curiosity grew, and what began as a
simple task to find out more about one architect became a book- length project
about the architecture and religious culture of the postwar suburbs— a story that
was largely untold outside individual congregations and was rapidly being lost. I
discovered two other significant Midwestern church architects, Edward Dart and
Edward Sövik, and followed their postwar work, too, into suburbs from Minne-
apolis to Indianapolis.
A great number of people helped me on this journey of discovery, and it is a
pleasure to thank them. Hands down, the richest and best part of my research was
my acquaintance with two people who were instrumental in the architectural and
religious life of this period: Edward A. Sövik and Martin E. Marty. Sövik, who
died in 2014 at the age of ninety-t wo, was a brilliant architect who was generous
with his ideas and insistent that in order for church architecture to serve God and
human beings, designers and builders needed to understand the meaning of Chris-
tian worship and community. I am so grateful I had the chance to know Ed and
learn from him about his early work and this exciting time for church architects.
I was amazed by his knowledge, memory, and the scope of his contributions to
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
church architecture. Much more remains to be written about the life and work of
Edward Sövik.
Martin Marty has been an extraordinary help to me and this project. Although
I move at a pace far, far slower than his own, his interest in the project was unflag-
ging. I first approached him because in 1959 Stade had designed Marty’s church in
the new Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village. I quickly recognized that Marty, as
editor at Christian Century but more importantly as a parish pastor, understood
the religious art and architecture of this period inside and out. He seemed to know
every character I would mention, and he was constantly dashing to his shelves to
pull out a relevant book or firing bibliographic references at me. Marty’s assess-
ment of this period in the life of the American denominations is critical but fair,
and, as always, his acute perception is balanced by humor and love.
Early in the project, Jesse and Ramsey Stade Barlow shared important insights
into Ramsey’s father, Charles Stade, and generously handed me a box of his archi-
tecture books. I thank Della Olsen for inviting me to see Stade’s house and provid-
ing original plans. People I interviewed extensively are acknowledged at the end of
the book in my list of Sources for Research; I am grateful to all of them for their
willingness to relive a time long past. Many others also played a role in this research.
Although they are unnamed in this book, I hope they know how much I appreciate
the time they gave to share memories or root around in drawers and long-f orgotten
boxes in search of old photographs or church bulletins. I met a number of extraor-
dinary volunteer church archivists: Lyle Nelson, Marilyn Hermann, Joanna Seltz,
Bette Hanna, Faith Albano, and Helen Danielson were especially helpful. Paula
DeBois, at St. Augustine’s Gary, has given an unfathomable amount of time to pre-
serving Dart’s building and the history of her congregation. Paula’s important work
offers proof that the stories of these postwar congregations continue to matter.
I had the pleasure of working in several professional archives, including those
of the Presbyterian Historical Society, the American Institute of Architects (AIA),
Luther Seminary, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Special thanks to archivists
Nancy Hadley at the AIA and Kari Bostrom at Luther Seminary. Jane Nicoll cre-
ated the Local History Collection and Archive for the Park Forest, Illinois, Public
Library; cofounded the Park Forest Historical Society; and helped to create a Park
Forest House Museum. She has worked tirelessly, in many capacities and for many
years, toward the preservation of the history of that remarkable place. Anyone
concerned with preserving the history of postwar suburban America is in her debt.
Professional colleagues have shown kind interest in my work and provided an
example to follow. I am especially indebted to Catherine Osborne, Dale Dowling,
Jeanne Halgren Kilde, Jay Price, Mark Torgerson, Peter Williams, and Victoria
Young. Brian Wolfe offered his fieldwork on Stade and helped me with photog-
raphy. Matthew Seymour shared his knowledge of Dart’s life and work, and I look
forward to seeing more from Matt on Dart. I was privileged to share portions of
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
my work at the American Studies Colloquium at Princeton University and the
Quadrant Program at the University of Minnesota. Many thanks to Bill Gleason
at Princeton and Katherine Solomonson and Anne Carter at Minnesota.
My fabulous editor, Abigail Van Slyck, was invested in the success of this book
from our first conversations about it several years ago. She gave her careful and
intelli gent attention to the manuscript several times, all the while juggling her
responsibilities as college professor, administrator, and president of the Society of
Architectural Historians. Her suggestions for improvement always made sense,
and this is a much better book because of her. I am grateful as well to an anonymous
reader who pushed this manuscript, and its author, in important directions. It is
a privilege to be included in the Architecture, Landscape, and American Culture
series of the University of Minnesota Press, and I thank the Press for the care it
gives to complex architectural studies. I particularly acknowledge the expert assis-
tance of Pieter Martin, Laura Westlund, Kristian Tvedten, and David Thorstad.
This research benefited from the generous financial support of several organi-
zations. I am grateful for summer research grants from the Louisville Foundation
and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the book would still be in
the research stage if not for an academic year faculty fellowship I later received
from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclu-
sions, or recom mendations expressed in this book do not necessarily represent
those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The community at Valparaiso University supported this project from Day One.
I am thankful for two summer travel grants and a semester of research leave, as well
as generous publication support. Even more important, I appreciate the commu-
nity’s steady interest in my research on church architecture. In 2009 I was awarded
the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christianity and the Arts. This chair
has provided the resources required to complete my book and support my own
and my students’ ongoing education in Christian art and architecture. Phyllis and
Dick have been extraordinarily generous to me and to Valparaiso University, and it
has been a pleasure to know these two interesting, gracious, and supportive alumni.
Several Valparaiso colleagues deserve special mention. The late Gus Sponberg
was a source of boundless encouragement and enthusiasm, and I miss our morn-
ing conversations in the coffee room about all things Midwestern. Richard Brauer
has been a terrific resource because of his rich understanding of postwar liturgical
art and our shared concern for the relationship between Christianity and the arts.
My good friend and co- teacher Sara Danger has celebrated the joys of this project
with me and cheered me on through the inevitable lows. Whether puzzling
through the interpretation of words, images, children, or husbands, her friendship
and insight have been invaluable these past ten years.
I am fortunate to have an appointment in Christ College, a small and collegial
interdisciplinary honors college within Valparaiso University. For welcoming me