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firm active: 1907-1921 minneapolis, minnesota :: chicago, illinois |
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Stewart Memorial Church
Purcell and Feick
Minneapolis, Minnesota 1909
Text by William Gray Purcell
Parabiographies entry, Volume for 1909
Job Date (in Parabiographies entry): August 11, 1909
STEWART MEMORIAL CHURCH
To our great pleasure we were able to secure acceptance of a non-traditional design, and it stands in 1938 fresh and interesting. It looks like a church, has a nice, sunny, inviting quality. In this building we demonstrated the economy resting in rational functional design.
Some years later this building was copied so exactly by the Bohemian Presbyterian Church of Hopkins, Minnesota, that it seemed as if they must have gotten hold of an old set of plans. It burned along about 1930 and was replaced with a very good looking church by Vanderbilt of Minneapolis.
Our building was completed by adding the Sunday School room to the west, for which we had made provision and drawn preliminary plans about 1920--but this was done from working drawings by others. Traditionally trained, they tried to make a "modern" design, and, of course, missed the idea in every critical relation.
In this plan, we tried to solve some Protestant church problems which, to our, knowledge, had not been fairly and consciously faced. Our solution of them was a success in so far as practical modern requirements are concerned.
Collection: William Gray Purcell Papers, Northwest Architectural Archives, University of Minnesota [AR:B4d1.3]
research courtesy mark hammons