Whale of a Church

In profile on a hillside, the prismed First Presbyterian Church of Stamford, Conn, rests like a huge, stranded whale, its ribs exposed in transparent, jewel-colored flesh. Dedicated last week, the $1.5 million, six-story-high structure seats 800 people in a Gothic-spirited interior with a steel-reinforced frame standing out as part of the decor. There are no buttress-type supports, and the sharp-sloping walls, of interlaced, precast concrete panels, are embedded at midsection and tail with 20,000 inch-thick, stained-glass chunks. It is the first church designed by Skyscraper Architect Wallace K. Harrison (U.N. Building, Rockefeller Center).

To find his inspiration, the senior partner of Harrison & Abramovitz in 1954 toured the great cathedrals of England, France and Germany. Through his friend, Painter Fernand Leger, he met Chartres' famed stained-glass artist, Gabriel Loire, who molded the glass according to Harrison's design. The ruby, amber, amethyst, emerald and sapphire glass sections, roughly chipped to flash like jewels, are laid out to form abstract designs representing the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

To advise him in the amount of glass that could be used, the architect called in British Structural Engineer Felix Samuely, and together the team produced a vast, stunning edifice in the form of a fish. Though not fashioned on such a preconception ("This interpretation was made after the design"), the shape honors an old symbol* that early Christians, pushed underground for their heretical beliefs, defiantly scratched on the walls of the Catacombs. Harrison's main purpose in using the design was to avoid inner supports and thus provide an unimpaired view. The sloping walls of the sanctuary, which is 60 ft. high at its peak, support each other; the principle is the same as that which causes a piece of firm paper to stand when it is creased and placed on edge.

The church has its revered relics, e.g., some handwrought nails from war-damaged Coventry Cathedral and a stone from the German castle where Martin Luther hid in 1521 while translating and revising the Greek New Testament. But these rank as no more than details blended into the revolutionary design which, says the Rev. Donald Fisher Campbell, senior pastor, "gives a sense of the presence of the Almighty."

*The letters in the Greek word for fish, 'IXOVS, are the initials for "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Saviour."

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