The Second Church of Christ, Scientist was built in 1910 by one of Los Angeles's most prominent Christian Science congregations at the height of the denomination's national expansion. Sited in the heart of West Adams, then the city's most prestigious residential district, the commission went to Alfred F. Rosenheim, the MIT-trained architect who had already established himself as the dean of Los Angeles classicists. The building's construction coincided with Christian Science's remarkable growth as America's fastest-growing and most female-led religious movement, and its monumental architecture served a clear purpose: to project legitimacy and permanence for a denomination still proving itself to skeptical observers.
Rosenheim delivered one of the most imposing Classical Revival temples in Los Angeles. A giant Corinthian portico announces the building from Adams Boulevard, its columns supporting a full entablature that leads the eye to the great dome rising behind. The steel-and-concrete structure, engineered by Albert C. Martin, houses an auditorium interior with a sweeping balcony and fine decorative plasterwork throughout. The temple form and classical vocabulary align the building with centuries of Western institutional architecture, a deliberate strategy employed by Christian Science congregations nationwide to signal respectability through architectural language.
