Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
W.C. Jones
American; 20th-century
Cedar Rapids, IA: 1340 3rd Avenue SE
62%
St. Paul’s United Methodist Church. 1914 (with Louis Sullivan)
Famously, Sullivan overshot his budget on this commission by some astronomical amount, forcing the church to boot him and hire some lesser guy — W.C. Jones — to simplify and execute his original designs. The resulting structure is a curio: a true Sullivan idea in terms of massing and space, but with basically arbitrary ornamentation and very little of it… the stained glass windows are mass-market and installed upside down! Things like the main stairwell and the education wing’s hallway include the expressive juxtapositions of closed and open spaces that make any Sullivan building what it is. But the prevailing decorative sparseness — and how it makes the building feel almost hollow — proves that ornament isn’t subordinate to whatever’s great about what Sullivan was up to, but an integral part of how space works in his buildings. (2024)