First Baptist Church of Texas City

A startlingly white, radial roof, which curves up to a slender central mast, dominates the First Baptist Church, its buff brick and concrete walls receding beneath umbrella-like eaves. Rejecting conventional religious building typologies, Hoover relied on a contrast between the bold, curved plane of the roof and the low, horizontal band of shade beneath it to imply a sense of centrality and shelter in the broad, open, suburban landscape of 9th Avenue North, the mid-twentieth century replacement for “old” Texas City.