Christian Science Church

The original Mother Church of Christian Science, designed by Franklin I. Welch with rose windows and a tower surmounted with a spire, was constructed in granite on a triangular lot in Boston’s Back Bay in 1894. A similar variation was also used for First Church of Christ, Scientist in Concord, New Hampshire, a gift from Mary Baker Eddy to her home state, which Violet Oakley visited during the dedication ceremonies in 1904. The fortress-like building was an appropriate image for the new religion, which was under siege by the mainstream Protestant churches, the medical profession, and the press. But in 1894, architect Solon Spencer Beman designed First Church of Christ, Scientist in Chicago in the style of his buildings at the Columbian World’s Exposition a year before. The centrally planned domed church with its expansive auditorium seemed well-suited for the non-hierarchical didactic Christian Science services in which congregants sang hymns and listened to the reading of a biblical passage followed by a reading of its exegesis in Eddy’s Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures. In 1906, Beman was called to Boston to work on the “Extension,” a magnificent edifice in limestone attached to the original Mother Church. Classical Revival became the “stylistic prototype” for new urban Christian Science churches, according to historian Paul Eli Ivey, because “it associated the religion with contemporary movements concerned with reform, city beautification, and the renewal of urban life.”¹

In Philadelphia, plans for First Church of Christ, Scientist at 40th and Walnut Streets were underway by 1906. As secretary of the Architecture Committee, Oakley was actively involved in the building of the church. The architectural firm of Carrère and Hastings, who designed the New York Public Library, was awarded the commission. In 1903 they had completed the First Church of Christ, Scientist in New York City. Oakley would have been aware that the Extension to the Mother Church in Boston signaled a shift toward classical architecture. Her personal preference for the early Italian Renaissance may have been a factor in Carrère and Hastings’s unique design. The five arches extending across the church’s white facade echoed the front of San Miniato in Florence and concealed the vast drum of the interior. Inside, the auditorium, eighty feet in diameter, soared fifty feet to a leaded-glass oculus in a coffered dome. A huge pipe organ filled the arched apse behind the Readers’ platform. In its rapturous 1910 review, the North American praised the “splendid light” and the gilded wrought iron and blue crystal chandeliers designed by Oakley and manufactured by Tiffany and Company.² While acknowledging the church’s “undeniable beauty,” Architecture found its foreign appearance “inharmonious” with the colonial buildings of Philadelphia.³ First Church of Christ, Scientist was in use from 1911 until 1995, when it was purchased by the University of Pennsylvania. Now known as The Rotunda, it serves as a community art center.

As Christian Science grew in Philadelphia, church members in the northwestern suburbs wanted a church closer to home. In 1915, plans were being drawn up for Second Church of Christ, Scientist at 5443 Greene Street in the Germantown section of the city. No doubt Oakley influenced the decision to hire the Philadelphia architectural firm of Day and Klauder to build Second Church. Highly regarded for his historical revival architecture, Frank Miles Day built Cogslea in 1906 and raised the roof of Oakley’s studio in 1912 to accommodate her latest commission from the Pennsylvania State Capitol.  Day and Klauder’s rendering depicted a central-plan church with features similar to First Church in West Philadelphia. Day died in 1918, and by the time construction began in 1924, the church plans had been considerably altered. Second Church of Christ, Scientist was active from 1925 until membership declined in the 1990s and the building was acquired by Germantown Friends School.

Oakley’s dedication to Christian Science was further evident in her illustrations for the sect’s publications. In 1934, when the rise of Nazism in Germany was destabilizing peace in Europe, Oakley contributed illustrations to a series of articles on international relations by prominent political journalists in the Christian Science Monitor, among them “The Great Illusion Still Deceives” (August 8, 1934) by Sir Norman Angell, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the year before.

Oakley also designed covers for two other Christian Science publications in 1934. The June issue of the monthly Christian Science Journal depicted a contemporary woman writing at a desk in a library, perhaps an homage to Eddy, with the dome of the Mother Church Extension in Boston in the window behind her. For the June 10 issue of the weekly Christian Science Sentinel she drew a heroic woman in a Renaissance gown guarding a nail-studded door that resembled the one in her studio.

In 1939, Oakley published Christ My Refuge: One of Seven Hymns by Mary Baker Eddy under the auspices of the Christian Science Church. Designed as an illuminated manuscript, Christ My Refuge demonstrated the artist’s mastery of calligraphy and her ability to create visually compelling contemporary images with a medieval art form.

¹ Paul Eli Ivey, Prayers in Stone: Christian Science Architecture: 1894–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999): 2.

² Ibid. 79 n. 64.

³ Ibid.