Hugh Ferriss and Religion on the Skyline
Hugh Ferriss’ Religion, from his 1929 work The Metropolis of Tomorrow. Ferriss is imagining a skyscraper that acts as a headquarters for all religion, operating harmoniously within a single structure.
Hugh Ferriss was an architect and illustrator, best known for his charcoal renderings of skyscrapers in the first half of the 20th century. His trademark use of bold shadows and light brought a sense of drama and weight to the buildings he chose to illustrate. Pictured here is an illustration from his 1929 work The Metropolis of Tomorrow, titled Religion. Ferriss imagined this tower would house the collective headquarters of all the city’s religions, working harmoniously within the building. This image and the underlying thought behind it’s creation ties into a larger trend around this time that saw religious structures attempt to re-take the skyline from commerce.
The skyscraper boom of the early 20th century transformed the skyline of every major city in the United States, and nearly every major city in Europe. Traditionally, it was religion that dominated the skyline of a town or city. With the proliferation of skyscrapers, religion was overtaken by commerce and the human ego, which quickly came to dominate our skylines. There was a brief period when attempts were made by God to retake the skyline back from Ego, however, and this is what Ferriss was depicting with Religion. I touched on this piece of history in the Conquering The Skies chapter of the verticality narrative, but I’d like to dive a bit deeper to understand what this meant for the perception of our cities.
Religion appears in the third part of The Metropolis of Tomorrow, titled An Imaginary Metropolis. Ferriss was imagining what the city of the future would look like, and his concept of religions uniting together is intriguing. It’s almost as if Ferriss believed God only stood a chance against Ego in the pursuit of the skyline if all religion united for the fight. This seems naive by today’s standards, but it makes sense considering the fate of other attempts by God to retake the skyline around the same time.
Hugh Ferriss’ rendering of Convocation Tower, designed by Bertram Goodhue in 1921. Ferriss uses the drama of night-lighting to focus the eye on the street-level experience at the base and the design of the crown at the top.
One such attempt was made by Bertram Goodhue, architect of the 1921 design for Convocation Tower in New York. Pictured here is an illustration of the design by Ferriss, rendered at night to heighten the drama of the design. The skyscraper’s base housed a large church, which Ferris rendered as a beacon of light, emitting a strong glow to its dark city surroundings. The design also featured a large cross at the summit, signifying the presence of God to the surrounding city. The design was ambitious, but was never realized. I’m aware of three other attempts by God to overtake Ego through verticality: the 1923 Broadway Temple in New York, the 1924 Chicago Temple Building, and the 1927 Central Methodist Episcopal Parish Tower in Columbus, Ohio. Each of these skyscrapers had a religious component, and each was attempting to retake the skyline from Ego.
The Chicago Temple Building is worth noting because it actually got built. Located in the center of The Loop, the tower houses a Neo-Gothic chapel at its summit, perched atop an otherwise un-notable slab of office floors. The chapel is topped by a slender steeple, which serves to really hit the metaphor home: this is God atop the skyline. Though the rich Neo-Gothic detailing is a welcome sight among the stripped-down Modernism now surrounding it, the chapel and steeple have become lost in the forest of towers that is the Chicago skyline.
The attempt by God to retake the skyline was a small detail in the larger story of the skyscraper boom, and because of this it’s an oft-forgotten detour in the history of skyscraper design. Still, it’s an intriguing piece of history, and it shows that the struggle between God and Ego for the skyline was an ongoing battle rather than a swift victory. Paul Morand sums up the results quite well in his 1930 book New York. He’s describing the spire of Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan, which is now dwarfed by its surroundings:
“In the eighteenth century this little brown spire dominated New York; to-day, all blackened, with it's gilt clock which stands out so pleasingly from the Curb Market, it is vanishing, strangled by banks, merely the smallest and darkest of the downtown monuments. Religion has no business here.”
It’s true that God has no place in the skylines of modern cities. Ego has overtaken all other interests in our quest for verticality, which gives Ferriss’ illustrations a greater weight in their own context. In each of the illustrations shown above, religion is shown in stark contrast to the surrounding city. In the first example, the skyscraper is shown as a hulking mass, shrouded in shadow, even though it seems to be daytime. In the second example, religion is shown as a beacon of light, in contrast to the dark, urban surroundings. This idea of contrast gets to the heart of the conflict between God and Ego; These two opposing forces were competing for a place in the skyline, but God had fallen so far behind in the fight that Ferriss chose to render it in sharp contrast to the rest of the city.
Even if these buildings got built, it’s hard to believe they would’ve had the desired effect on the skyline in subsequent years. No doubt they would’ve gone the way of Trinity or the Chicago Temple, and in that process, any power they once commanded would’ve been greatly dimmed as a result. I previously wrote about the Trinity example and how this process is inevitable for any structure that was once the tallest of it’s surroundings. I haven’t made up my mind whether it’s a positive or negative for our cities, and I don’t suspect there’s a clear cut answer.
Check out other unbuilt designs here.