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 The First Church of Christ, Scientist, also known as the Mother Church, was designed to make the healing and educational system known as Christian Science accessible to everyone. Located in Boston, the original 1,000-seat church was built in 1894 using New Hampshire granite. In 1906, the church designed a 3,000-seat extension using a combination of Renaissance and Byzantine architectural concepts.
Voice intelligibility at the church was of primarily importance, with guest readers playing a major role in public testimonial meetings and Sunday services.
Like most houses of worship, the Mother Church is particularly reverberant in nature, as it was designed to project sound from the pulpit area without electronic amplification. In addition hard surfaces such as limestone further exacerbate this problem; sound waves bounce off the walls, making it difficult to direct sound to the seating areas.
To improve vocal clarity, BL&S provided sound reinforcement to the seating area with two sixteen-foot tall by four-inch wide steerable array column loudspeakers. BL&S sound engineers tailored the output of the church sound system to focus speech directly on the seating area and almost completely off the surrounding limestone. Thus, the new loudspeakers provide clear, intelligible sound with very minimal volume change.
The team carefully designed the church sound system to match the church’s aesthetics. Matching the color of the loudspeakers to the exact shade of limestone within the church made the 16-foot tall column all but invisible. Today, parishioners from the front pews to the back row can appreciate the spoken word.
(Photo: Courtesy of The Mary Baker Eddy Collection) |
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