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Updated: First Congregational Church in Berkeley survives fire with some damage
Earlier this week I took a walk around the perimeter of Berkeley’s fire-damaged First Congregational Church. These are impressions from the exterior. I’ve also had a chance to find out more about the details of the history of the church building complex.
First, press reports in the days after the September 30 2016 fire sometimes gave the impression that the whole church had burned. People out of town who know that I’m interested in Berkeley’s historic buildings called me to say they were so sorry to see a historic church was completely destroyed.
This was definitely not the case. First Congregational Church is a big complex and most of it is intact, although some unburned portions clearly have water damage.
In fact, on Sunday a friend saw a curious sight. People were stopping their cars on Durant, north of the building, apparently looking for the location of the fire they’d heard had burned a church at Durant and Dana. Their attention was drawn to the vacant Trinity Church sanctuary with its battered exterior, across the street from First Congregational. They were ignoring the completely intact north wing of the First Congregational building behind them.
The main part of the First Congregational complex has four elements built at different times, but architecturally so harmonious that they appear to be one structure. The complex is a “C” shape, with the open end facing a courtyard along Dana Street. The main sanctuary and clock / bell tower at the long center of the “C”. On the north is Plymouth House, a two story plus basement wing facing on Durant Avenue, connected to a chapel at the corner of Durant and Dana.
On the south is Pilgrim Hall, another two-story plus basement wing, with a main entrance facing on Channing Way.
Having watched the fire, and now looked at the aftermath, it appears that the southern / Pilgrim Hall wing was seriously damaged, the main sanctuary suffered some damage, and the north wing was untouched by fire, although there’s a smoke smell in the structure. (Please keep in mind these are just a layperson’s impressions, not an expert assessment.)
Here’s an excerpt from the FCCB website, posted on Saturday, the day after the fire, by Senior Minister Molly Phinney Baskette. “There was heavy damage to the roof and second floor of Pilgrim Hall (the side of the building where the offices and Large and Small Assemblies are). Offices in that area are likely completely destroyed. There will be much water and smoke damage throughout that part of the building, perhaps on all floors. The roof and skylight over the Large Assembly are a mess, but the walls are intact.”
The Pilgrim Hall building has definitely lost most of its roof and second floor offices. Here, the exterior walls—a brick veneer in front of wooden studs—look seriously damaged at the top where they met the now-vanished roof, but more intact lower down. The second floor appears entirely open to the sky—you can see sky from the street through the office windows.
But because the fire apparently started in the attic or roof area of this wing, the lower floor and basement do not seem to be burned. In several of the “ground” floor windows, for instance, there are still sheer curtains hanging intact, the sort of interior fixture that would have been gone in moments if fire had burned into those rooms. Some of those curtains are in the east end of the building where the church library was located.
On Monday I watched a crew from a fire recovery company at work in the wing packing and removing scores of boxes from the building. Each box was carefully labeled with contents, from office supplies to dishes to books. Unburned office equipment and furniture can still be seen through the exterior windows.
It would seem certain that the lower floors and basement were deluged with water and fire debris pouring down from above. On Friday, during the fire, I watched smoke billowing and water cascading out of the main ground floor doors of the west end of the wing into the parking lot, and fire engines blasting water into the second floor windows on the east.
But if the lower floors of the wing “only” have water damage, then it raises the hope that the much of the physical structure can be salvaged or reconstructed within the brick shell and exterior restored.
Just north of the Pilgrim Hall wing there is dramatic visual evidence of how close the rest of the complex came to burning. On the southeast corner of the sanctuary wing there’s fire damage at the corner of the sanctuary roof and running up the seam between east and south roof planes.
On Friday, during the fire, I watched from the west as smoke trickled out of this southern end of the sanctuary roof. Eventually, water blasted from inside through the shingles, evidence that a fire hose had been brought into the attic. If the fire had taken hold in the high attic of the sanctuary it’s quite possible the sanctuary would have burned and the fire could have easily spread to the north wing and even adjacent buildings.
(One factor during the fire was the stiff wind blowing from the south, southwest. It carried smoke east / northeast across the intersection of Dana and Durant, and also into the Unit III residence hall complex across the street, which was completely evacuated during the fire. If the direction of the wind had been more westerly or northwesterly—or blowing south—smoke and embers could have easily rained down on adjacent blocks of large wooden homes, and apartment buildings.)
What’s the condition of the sanctuary? From both inside and out, it actually looks largely intact. There doesn’t seem to be visible smoke damage to the interior, and the massive organ pipes still stand in the chancel. Phinney Baskette wrote:
“The fire spread through the attic of Pilgrim Hall to the Sanctuary roof. The firefighters were able to contain it so it did not spread beyond the southeast corner of the roof, but there is significant water (and presumably some smoke) damage to the sanctuary, especially above the chancel and first few rows of pews. We will certainly be displaced from the sanctuary for a while.”
There are several large patches in the arched ceiling where plaster has fallen and the wooden underlayment is visible. A much larger portion of the white ceiling is discolored in patches, along with portions of the walls. The front of the carpeted floor of the sanctuary is littered with broken plaster. Water presumably poured into the attic, soaked the plaster ceiling, and brought these portions down. This could, one imagines, have affected the integrity of more of the ceiling than the portions that fell.
How did the fire start? Here’s another part of the posting from the Senior Minister.
“Some are wondering what caused the fire. We have a pretty good idea, and it will be revealed in due time, but in order not to compromise the claim-filing process, I've been asked not to speak about it publicly yet. Please be reassured that it was not foul play or vandalism.”
After looking at the building, I also had a useful conversation with Anthony Bruce, executive director of Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). (Disclosure: I’m the current BAHA president). Anthony has a near encyclopedic understanding of the history of major buildings in Berkeley, and can quickly research what he doesn’t know.
Here’s what I learned from him about the First Congregational buildings.
The complex was created from four different construction projects over a span of a quarter century. The skill of the different architects and wisdom of the congregation in making all the additions work together and all follow a red-brick, Georgian, design motif, makes the different buildings work as one.
As I noted in a previous article, First Congregation was the first church to organize in what was then the east part of the future Berkeley, adjacent to the new University of California campus. The congregation built a sanctuary and rectory on a large lot on the northeast corner of Dwight and Telegraph.
Later, in the 1880s, the congregation moved to the corner of Dana and Durant, into a much larger new building designed by famed California architect, and Berkeley resident, Clinton Day.
In the early 1920s—a period of considerable economic prosperity and also part of a heyday of institutional religion in Berkeley—the congregation began a series of projects that resulted in the current complex, and the demolition of the Clinton Day building.
First, the present day sanctuary and clock / bell tower were constructed. The cornerstone is inscribed from 1924. The actual construction was finished in 1925, the same year the building permit was issued. The architect was Horace G. Simpson, who lived in Berkeley.
The construction of Pilgrim Hall on the south followed quickly, in 1926, also designed by Simpson. Ironically, it was dedicated September 29, 1926, almost 90 years to the day before this most recent fire gutted the upper levels.
The construction of Pilgrim Hall resulted in the relocation of what Bruce describes as a magnificent nineteenth century house designed by the famed Ernest Coxhead that originally stood on this corner. The house was moved a block north from Dana / Channing a block to Dana / Durant. There it stood for another quarter century, in use as a church Sunday School annex.
In 1945, Scott Heyman—sometimes listed as a partnership of Ratcliff and Heyman—designed the chapel at the northeast corner of the complex, right at the intersection of Durant and Dana. It was constructed in 1948.
The last piece of the interconnected complex to be constructed was the Plymouth House wing along Durant, on the north. It was built in 1955, again designed by Heyman or Ratcliff and Heyman. Plymouth House was built largely to serve the UC student population.
Interestingly, this year’s fire is not the first in the complex. There was a major fire that damaged the sanctuary in 1967. In 1978 another fire damaged Plymouth House, and also affected the sanctuary. Both times the Congregation recovered and the buildings were restored.
Traffic and circulation:
As of this writing, Durant Avenue is open and unaffected by the fire aftermath, except for creating more difficult right turns from Durant onto Dana.
Curbside parking and the right hand lane on southbound Dana between Durant and Channing are blocked off, so southbound traffic must stay to the left.
The Channing / Dana intersection is now a “T”. Channing is completely blocked off between Dana and Ellsworth.
If you’re driving through the neighborhood, it would be best to avoid both Dana and Channing in the church vicinity. Use Bancroft or Haste to head west, Durant or Dwight to head east.
Further information:
First Congregational Church has a “fire news” section on their website. You can check it for updates.
You can also find a Flickr stream of photos of the fire and the interior after the fire at:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/firstchurchberkeley/29806988030/in/photostream/
