Introducing the Miller House
First Christian Church, Columbus, Indiana
For decades, the banker and industrialist J. Irwin Miller was a kind of architectural catalyst in his home town of Columbus. As a way to encourage better design, in 1957 a foundation he had established offered to cover the architect's fees for a local school. Over time, that expanded into a program to pay the design costs for any public buildings so long as the architect was chosen from a list of his favorites — allowing a relatively small town to acquire an outsize share of buildings by I.M Pei, Richard Meier, Cesar Pelli, Saarinen's associate Kevin Roche and other notables. There are also two Saarinen churches in Columbus. One is by Eliel, seen here, the First Christian Church, from 1942, one of the first churches in the U.S. to be built in a modern style. Miller, who helped to establish the National Council of Churches, was a member of the congregation, and this was the building that brought him into his long working relationship with the Saarinens.