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Architecture & Engineering


Design
Perspectives
 By Clair Enlow
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January 22, 2003

1907 church sees wrecking ball as salvation

  • The church has drawn a line between saving the historic structure and saving itself.
    • By CLAIR ENLOW
    Special to the Journal

    With its red-orange tiled dome set squarely on a Beaux Arts box of tan brick and terra cotta, the three-story First United Methodist Church at Fifth and Marion holds a space for history and human scale in the city’s narrowing canyons of glass and steel. It’s rest and respite for the eyes and spirit in a city bent on higher and better land use.

    Inside, the sanctuary rises in stages above carved wood furnishings into a wide dome ringed with clerestory windows. Designed by Seattle parishioner James Schack and built in 1907, it’s a forum for speech, with heavenly light and music to back it up.


     
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