Houses of worship in a secular world
RETHINKING OLDER CHURCH SPACES AS SOCIETY CHANGES
We see them every day. Closed churches. The blog Patheos says that between 6,000 and 10,000 churches close in America every year. The northeast has more history in its architecture that any other place in America, so these closings have a different meaning. When times change, but our buildings remain, those buildings get repurposed — or torn down.
Beyond history, the 21stcentury crash in church attendance in the northeast has a hard physical consequence on sacred spaces as they become economic drivers for new secular uses.
In Stamford, a 1913 First Congregational Church In Stamford will be recreated with its existing building subdivided into apartments and new units built on the land around the building. In Newtown’s Sandy Hook, the former St. John’s Episcopal Church may become a pizza restaurant, actually focusing on family, in an intended response to the shootings. These projects are the tip of the iceberg of new construction in old churches.
But these necessary repurposing’s have an added undertone of irony, and, perhaps just a little sadness. Building to a Greater Good of worshipping God meant that these buildings have extraordinary craftsmanship, embellishing detail and exquisite material use. But the hardest truth is that each reuse of the sacred underscores the loss of building to a larger purpose than simply enhancing our secular lives.
The classic aesthetics of Gothic Revival of timber, brick and stone, or white and brick Colonial rendering and their superstructure of trusses, arches and beams to create outsized spaces and windows have real value, no matter what the use. But their intended use has a special meaning here in New England.
The first settlers of New England were the astronauts of their time. But they were not exploring, they were seeking safe harbor. They needed safety because the way they viewed God was simply incompatible with even the dramatically vital Protestant Reformation.
Four hundred years ago, spiritual refugees birthed New England, so this new wave of secularized buildings reflect our cultural evolution better than any other architectural reality I see today. In one generation we have made Sunday like any other day of the week. Whether it’s soccer practice, our desire to eat brunch or buying what we want when we want it, governmentsanctioned Sabbath is dead in America. It has become a cliché to cite the 2015 Pew Study “America’s Changing Religious Landscape.” but I will: Fifty percent fewer baby boomers declare themselves “mainline Protestants” than their greatestgeneration parents. And it is not just Protestants or Jewish houses of worship. The Hartford Archdiocese announced in 2017 that its 212 Connecticut Catholic parishes will be consolidated into 127, a downsizing of about 40 percent, and shuttering almost 30 church buildings. The third decade of the 21st century Connecticut architecture will evidence this change in what gets lost and remade.
This new spate of renovation is just an acceleration of something that has always gone on. As an architect, I repurposed a Baptist church in Beacon, N.Y., as a health center 25 years ago. Over 40 years ago, New Haven saw the Educational Center For The Arts and the Yale Repertory Theater create new uses for abandoned worship spaces that were built in the 19th century.
In the tight quarters of New England, older buildings are usually very well located, so their sites have value. In an age of green sensibilities, it can be said that the “embodied energy” of abandoned buildings takes on importance beyond the economic. But beyond even the deeply desired “sustainability” of salvaged construction, I think we can learn from how we are treating those buildings.
Unlike factories that we see in Bridgeport being recast to house new selfstorage facilities or commercial uses, the extraordinary attention to detail of buildings created to the glory of God can transform a new use into the salvation of history.
But more than that, the marking of change that these repurposings manifest captures the passage of time — rather than pretend that it does not exist.