North Christian Church

The North Christian Church is a former church building at 850 Tipton Lane in Columbus, Indiana, United States. Designed by Eero Saarinen and completed in 1964, the structure originally housed the North Christian Church, a congregation of the Disciples of Christ. 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 it 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 13-acre (5.3 ha) 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 itself has a hexagonal floor plan. Above a glass curtain wall, ribs divide a slate roof into six sections, supporting a central metal spire that is 192 feet (59 m) high. 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 baptistery. 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 side.

The North Christian Church congregation was founded in late 1955 by forty-three former members of the First Christian Church. The congregation initially met in various places across Columbus; 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 its building. The congregation was disbanded on July 16, 2022, and the Bartholomew County Public Library took over the structure two years later, intending to renovate it into a library.

The North Christian Church building is located at 850 Tipton Lane in Columbus, Indiana, United States. The 13.5-acre (5.5 ha) 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, though the design had been diluted by the late 1970s, when a neighbor built a brick house right in front of the church building.

The church building is near the site's western boundary and is surrounded by a 6-foot-tall (1.8 m) 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 5 to 6 feet (1.5 to 1.8 m) 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 east of the building. 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 6-foot-high (1.8 m) 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.

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.