Church of Christ, Scientist on Helvetiaplatz

About the building

On Helvetiaplatz, the semicircular square at the southern end of the Kirchenfeld Bridge, stands a cubic building under a shallow hipped roof. It is the church of Christian Science, built in 1926 to plans by the Bern practice Nigst & Padel for the First Church of Christ in Bern. The building inventory describes it as a neoclassical hall with an Italian flavour, with a raised main floor and a clerestory, a band of windows high up in the wall.

The narrow side facing the square is designed as the main front: framed by pilaster strips, with a porch on piers and in geometrically simplified forms. In the spandrels above the entrance, rich interlace softens the heaviness of the portal. The clerestory has a row of arched windows modelled on early Christian churches, on the long sides the windows are framed by blind arches, and on the west side a polygonal, apse-like projection stands out. In its basic form and proportions the building resembles a late neoclassical temple, but its sober, spare façade already points towards modernism, according to the inventory.

Christian Science goes back to the American Mary Baker Eddy, who set down her teaching in 1875 and founded the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in 1879; its centre is the Mother Church in Boston. According to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, the first Swiss association was formed in Zurich in 1907, after which buildings for worship and reading rooms followed in larger towns. For Bern the dictionary gives the year 1927, while the building inventory gives 1926 as the year of construction; the two dates may refer to building and dedication, but the sources do not say so. The congregations are lay churches that govern themselves.

The square itself was part of the district plan that the Berne Land Company had co-signed when the Kirchenfeld was developed. The church was renovated in 1998. It is rated as worthy of protection and belongs to the Kirchenfeld building group. Look at the interlace in the spandrels of the portal, the only ornament on the otherwise spare front.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Helvetiaplatz 6 · Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz: Christliche Wissenschaft · Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Quartiergeschichte Kirchenfeld-Brunnadern · Wikidata: Q55412442