Maybeck’s Berkeley Church: Industrial Windows, Concrete Columns and a Garden-Like Edge

By Matthew Martinez, Founder, CEO & Managing Broker, Diamond Real Estate Group. California DRE #01869679.

Bernard Maybeck’s First Church of Christ, Scientist in Berkeley demonstrates that historical inspiration and modern materials can coexist. Its design draws on several architectural traditions while using industrial windows and cast concrete in highly individual ways.

The result is especially interesting because it resists a simple opposition between craft and mass production. Factory-made components became part of an architectural composition shaped by adjustment, ornament and an unusual relationship to planting.

The congregation described qualities as well as rooms

The congregation’s building history records its meeting with Maybeck in 1909 and a program that included both practical spaces and desired qualities such as welcome, comfort, harmony and simplicity. Construction followed a permit issued in September 1910; the first service was held in August 1911.

This gives the project a richer starting point than an exterior style. The clients were asking for an experience and a set of uses. Architecture had to translate those aspirations into space, light and material.

Factory windows were adapted rather than accepted unchanged

The National Historic Landmark documentation describes Maybeck redividing industrial window sash and using handmade glass to alter its effect. The account relates the resulting pattern to a screen rather than a conventional church window.

The distinction lies in treatment. A standard manufactured element can become the basis for an individual design when its proportions, subdivisions and surrounding materials are considered together.

This approach also complicates the idea that architectural character must depend on every component being custom-made from the beginning.

Concrete and redwood establish a deliberate contrast

The landmark account describes cast-concrete columns alongside rough redwood and trellis structures carrying vines. It also records carefully developed capitals and a roof composition rising through several stages toward a modest cupola.

The material contrasts are part of the experience: smooth or molded surfaces meet a rougher natural texture, while planting extends the composition beyond the building envelope.

The trellis is especially important as an intermediate element. It belongs to the architecture but remains open to light, air and vegetation, softening the boundary between interior institution and surrounding garden.

The interior structure contributes to the room’s character

The documentation describes diagonal trusses spanning the Greek-cross plan from concrete supports. Structural members also carry decorative treatment, connecting the way the space is held up with the way it is seen.

This is a useful architectural principle: a ceiling can reveal an ordering system rather than simply cover one. The visual rhythm of supports and spans helps a person understand a large room.

The building’s individuality comes from these relationships, not from one historical reference repeated consistently in every detail.

The complex grew after the first opening

The congregation records a Sunday School addition completed in 1929 by Maybeck in association with Henry Gutterson. The later work continued the site’s institutional use while adding another date and collaboration to its history.

The Mary Baker Eddy Library’s architectural research places Maybeck’s project within a broader discussion of congregations seeking locally distinctive buildings. That context helps explain why the church does not simply reproduce one standard denominational template.

Berkeley’s architecture includes experimental combinations

The church shows how a building can be rooted in its time through industrial materials while borrowing freely from earlier forms. Looking closely at how components meet is more revealing than searching for a single style label.

Explore real estate and home for sale in Berkeley and our older-home guide. Contact Diamond to compare homes with an appreciation of the city’s varied architectural approaches.

Sources checked October 28, 2026. This is an architectural-history account. Confirm current tours and access with the congregation.