Tradition/Innovation 2
William Wurster's designs for the First Congregational Church in Stockton, California are the focus of this panel. The two images at the top left of the panel are two of his numerous sketches for this project--both experimental and traditional. He presented three different possible schemes to the congregation, shown here immediately following the first two sketches, some in the more traditional Gibbs/Wren model than others. Given that he presented the ideas in 1926, some of the sketches were clearly influenced by European modernism and extraordinarily innovative for their time. In the end, the congregation chose the most traditional design. The last image in the middle row is what was actually constructed.
The bottom two images here are an example of a Wren church and a diagram of a typical European church.