The North Christian Church is a building and former congregation at 850 Tipton Lane in Columbus, Indiana, United States. Designed by Eero Saarinen and completed in 1964, the structure originally housed a Protestant Disciples of Christ congregation of the same name. The interior designer Alexander Girard, the landscape architect Dan Kiley, and Saarinen's associate Kevin Roche assisted with various parts of the design. The building has been owned by the Bartholomew County Public Library since 2024. The design has received praise over the years, particularly for its spire and iconography, and was frequently compared to the First Christian Church, designed by Saarinen's father Eliel Saarinen. In addition, the building is designated as a National Historic Landmark.
The church building is set on grounds designed by Kiley. The grounds include a berm surrounding the building, with entrances accessed by driveways to the west and east, as well as various trees arranged across the site. The building has a hexagonal floor plan. Above a glass curtain wall, ribs divide a slate roof into six sections supporting the central metal spire. The base of the spire includes an oculus that admits light inside. The interior, designed by Girard, is split across two main levels, accessed by a narthex on an intermediate level. The lower level contains classrooms, an auditorium, a kitchen, and a chapel. The bowl-shaped sanctuary, on the upper story, consists of a central communion table, surrounded by pews on five sides and a pulpit, organ, and choir loft on the sixth.
The North Christian Church congregation was founded in late 1955, and one of its early members, the industrialist J. Irwin Miller, helped the congregation acquire a plot of land in 1958. After interviewing various architects, the congregation's building committee hired Saarinen in 1959, and the plans were finalized shortly before his death two years later. A groundbreaking ceremony took place in 1962, and the building hosted its first service on March 8, 1964. Over the years, the congregation made numerous modifications to the building and expanded the grounds. By the early 21st century, the congregation faced dwindling membership and was unable to maintain the building. After the congregation was disbanded on July 16, 2022, the Bartholomew County Public Library took over the structure. The library system renamed the building The LEX: the Library of Experience, intending to renovate it into a library branch.
Site The North Christian Church building is located at 850 Tipton Lane in Columbus, Indiana, United States. The site is flat and sits roughly between U.S. Route 31 to the north, Home Avenue to the east, Tipton Lane to the south, and Sycamore Street to the west. Due to the area's street grid, Tipton Lane is split into two offset sections at Sycamore Street. Just north of the T-intersection with the eastern section of Tipton Lane, Sycamore Street turns west, becoming the western section of Tipton Lane. Sycamore Street does not intersect U.S. 31, though there was a proposal in 1960 to extend Sycamore Street to U.S. 31, which would have cut through the property. The surrounding area consists mostly of low-density residences. Before the church building was constructed, the western part of the site was a field, while the eastern part was a forest.
The grounds were designed by Dan Kiley, who had worked with the church building's architect Eero Saarinen at the Miller House and Irwin Union Bank in Columbus and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri. The former North Christian Church congregation had purchased the western portion of the property first, followed later by land to the east. Kiley was involved with both the original landscape design and subsequent modifications. The final landscape design dates from 1974, three years after the final piece of property was acquired. The landscape design was intended to limit observers' views of the building before they approached it. The design had been diluted by the late 1970s, when a neighbor built a brick house right in front of the church building.
Berm and driveways The church building is near the site's western boundary and is surrounded by a berm. When the building opened, the berm was nicknamed the Mount of Expectation, since it was supposed to give the feeling that something significant would happen to congregants attending services there. Moats run along the berm to the north and south, letting natural light into the building. Each moat extends outward from the building's base and contains various plantings. Vehicle drop-offs, above the berm, adjoin entrances on the western and eastern elevations of the building. Stairs descend from both drop-offs to the entrances, and further steps descend into the moats. There is also a ventilation shaft near the western entrance.
A driveway leads from the curve where Sycamore Street becomes Tipton Lane, near the southwest corner of the site. East of the building, a pair of one-way driveways leads from Tipton Lane, ending at a parking lot. The eastern driveways travel through a grove of native hardwoods, planted so that visitors on the driveways cannot see the building until they reach the parking lot. The parking lot itself is divided into four sections by hedges made of arborvitae, and there are additional hedges surrounding the parking lot on all sides except the west, concealing parked cars from view. The layout of the hedges evokes the pews in traditional churches. Both the western driveway and the parking lot lead to one-way loops, which connect with the vehicle drop-offs. A pathway leads from the parking lot to the steps outside the main entrance, passing through the vehicle drop-off.
Other landscape features The site had previously been a field, and all of the trees there were added as part of Kiley's landscape design. Two parallel rows of maple trees, planted in the shape of offset dashed lines, run along Tipton Lane on the southern boundary of the site. The maple trees form an allée that surrounds the property. The entrances on the western and eastern elevations are flanked by dwarf crabapple trees. Adjoining the northern and southern elevations, the moats have myrtle trees, and there is a magnolia grove beyond. The berms on these elevations have grass plantings, which replaced the original cotoneaster and yew plants. Kiley's landscape design retained some trees on the easternmost part of the site, which already existed when the church building was built.
Early plans called for memorial plaques to be embedded into the berm, with each plaque honoring a deceased congregant. Southeast of the church building is a memorial garden planted in 1995, with 43 trees representing the original members of the congregation. The garden, designed by Todd Williams, contains wooden plaques and a bench. The original plans called for a sculpture and a wall made of slate, which were never built.
Architecture The North Christian Church was designed by Eero Saarinen and Associates, with Eero Saarinen as primary architect. Alexander Girard was responsible for many of the interior furnishings, including objects used for liturgy. Van Zelm, Heywood & Shadford received the mechanical engineering contract, while Henry Pfisterer received the structural engineering contract. Other contractors included acoustic consultant Bolt, Beranek & Newman, food-service contractor Howard L. Post, and lighting consultant Stanley McCandless. Repp and Mundt were the church building's general contractors.
The building's footprint is hexagonal and is stretched along a west–east axis. In designing the building, Saarinen wanted to create a modern-styled building that was dominated by its sanctuary, as in traditional churches. He believed that modern churches were not as grand as traditional churches, and that secondary spaces such as Sunday schools, gymnasiums, and kitchens detracted from the significance of the church building itself. To emphasize the sanctuary, Saarinen placed most of the rooms in the basement, leaving only the sanctuary above ground. The shape was inspired by the Jewish Star of David, an allusion to how the Christian faith was derived from Judaism. The North Christian Church was built for, and used by, a congregation of the same name that disbanded in 2022.
Exterior The church building's basement is slightly below the site's original grade but is almost completely surrounded by the concrete berm, leaving only the roof and spire visible. Saarinen was inspired by the steep steps at Angkor Wat and Borobudur, where visitors had to interact with the architecture and work to reach the sanctuary. He thought that building an entire church on one level made religion "too easy" and detracted from the spiritual experience of going to church. Therefore, he placed the sanctuary above the berm and basement. Saarinen wrote that "you should have to work for it and it should be a special thing", referencing how congregants had to climb up the berm before climbing back down to the entrance. The design also gave the impression that the sanctuary was floating above the basement.
On the first floor, the facade is a curtain wall composed of single-layered glazed panels separated by wooden mullions. The glass panels are tall and are separated into bays. Transom bars run horizontally across each bay approximately above grade. The windows on the curtain wall cannot be opened. Each corner of the hexagon has a steel buttress, which is welded to a concrete base and flares outward as it ascends. These buttresses contain downspouts that collect water from the roof gutters, emptying into concrete drainage basins around the building. The main entrance is on the east, where four double doors lead into a vestibule; a side entrance to the west leads to the baptistry in the basement.
Roof and spire The eaves, which form the roof's perimeter, extend about from the facade and are low to the ground. The lead-coated copper fascia above the eaves is sloped upward, with a copper gutter concealed behind it. The soffit beneath the eaves is made of plaster and slopes down to about above grade. The roof itself is divided into six sections, which are clad in blue-black slate shingles, sloping upward toward the center of the building. Each section of the roof is separated by a steel rib with a copper cladding. The ribs converge at an oculus opening at the center of the roof, just below the spire. The oculus opening contains bells, which are visible between each of the ribs. The roof gave the impression of a "steel hat sitting over a concrete bowl", as the building's structural engineer Henry Pfisterer put it.
The spire reaches above ground and rises or from the oculus. When the church was completed, it was visible several miles away. The spire was intended to evoke spires in older Christian churches, which usually functioned as the focal points of these buildings.
On this site, with this kind of central plan, I think I would like to make the church really all one form: all the tower. There would be the gradual building up of the sheltering, hovering planes becoming the spire. The spire would not be put on a box or come up from the sides of the roof, as we did at Stephens College. The whole thing, all the planes, would grow up organically into the spire.