1961, O’Neil Ford and Associates. 1203 N. Fulton St.
This church, which has a simple rectangular floor plan like that of the Little Chapel (DD9), also displays Ford’s simple but expressive roof structures. Mexico City engineer Felix Candela, with whom Ford collaborated on a half-dozen projects, assisted in the design of the hyperbolic paraboloid thin shell concrete roof. The five “leafs” on each slope resemble fingers reaching to the ridge. The roof dips low to the ground, forming a wide gable end of plain brickwork in a barn-like form. The carved wooden doors were made by Lynn Ford. By the late 1950s, Ford, like others, was taking note of work in Scandinavia and Finland; the crispness of the church’s facade and mass combines that interest with Ford’s longstanding Texas vernacular studies.