Church of Christ the
King, Turners Cross, Cork Church of Christ the
King, Turners Cross, Cork
Even today, seventy years after it was planned, the Church of Christ the King, Turners Cross, Cork by F Barry Byrne, a Chicago architect is pretty amazing. At that time it was extraordinary.
Why?
Most architectural work tends to go to local architects yet the conservative Irish Catholic Church here sought out a Chicago Architect, F Barry Byrne to design and construct a church dramatically different from anything yet built in Ireland, of innovative material, of innovative shape and with a dramatic sculptural entrance by John Storrs.
It was a church unlike anything in Europe at the time and in some ways it is more imaginative in shape, if not more technologically advanced, than the groundbreaking 1922 church by Perret at Le Raincy in France. Originally Barry Byrne intended to build in brick, but a design in concrete was agreed for reasons of economy. The church cost £30,000. The shape of this very unusual church is best seen from the rear, as in this early view, or in the plans. Views from the road at the front conceal the shape, which was very daring for the time. An irregular shaped octagonal form, it is almost ovoid, due to the narrow front and rear faces.
As far as is known there is no other case where an American architect was used to build or design an Irish church, indeed buildings by international architects in Ireland are still very rare. Frank Lloyd Wright was not copied by local architects. Neither would they copy Barry Byrne.
No church as imaginative was to be built in Ireland for almost forty years.
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Who was Barry Byrne?
F(rancis) Barry Byrne, despite his Irish name had no particular connections with Cork. He was an American architect from Chicago.
Born December 19 1883, to parents of Irish origin but born in Canada and the USA. His father was a railway man who was killed in 1897, leaving a widow with six children. Barry Byrne left school at fourteen to work for Montgomery Ward, the mail order company, but he knew from an early age that he wanted to be an architect. In 1902, despite the absence of any obvious qualifications, he managed to get a job as office boy in the Oak Park studio of Frank Lloyd Wright, then an up and coming Chicago architect, later to be recognised as one of the most significant architects of all time.
Progressing with Wright from office boy to apprentice, he worked on several important Wright commissions, including the Unity Temple in Oak Park. In 1908 Byrne left the Wright studio to work briefly with Walter Burley Griffin, (Griffin was later to be famous as the designer of the overall scheme for the new capital of Australia, Canberra) as a draftsman. By November of that year he was practicing in a short lived partnership in Seattle, Washington with another former Wright studio associate, Andrew Willatzen. Here he seems to have helped to design, or designed, OUR LADY OF GOOD HELP, Hoquiam, WA in 1910. This would appear to be the first church project.
Briefly in California, he was soon back in the mid-west.
Initially working again with Griffin in a practice mainly designing houses, the resumed relationship was to prove somewhat difficult. It deteriorated rapidly once Griffin and his equally, or perhaps even more talented wife, Marion Mahoney Griffin, both went to Australia to supervise the Canberra project, leaving Byrne in charge of their Chicago office. Marion Mahoney Griffin later blamed Frank Lloyd Wright for intensifying the sharp artistic differences that arose between Byrne and Griffin. Griffin remained in Australia and Byrne began to specialise in work for religious clients in the catholic community, designing several schools as well as churches.
A visit to Europe in 1926 shortly before he designed the Cork church, when he met leading architects of the day including Mies van der Rohe was influential in moving his style onward.
Where did the Turners Cross Commission come from?
It is unclear which church commission in America may have helped to give rise to the Cork commission. His other churches prior to Turners Cross are the Church of St Thomas the Apostle, Chicago (1922) described as "too advanced for the Catholic Church" by the Archbishop of Chicago but actually relatively conventional in design. St Patrick, Racine (1924) and the more dramatic Church of Christ the King, Tulsa (1926).
According to reports the then Bishop of Cork, Dr Cohalan, who was faced with cost problems in building a new church for the expanding suburban district of Turners Cross, read an article by an American architect which suggested Barry Byrne as a possible source of a low-cost church. While Barry Byrne certainly contributed articles on church design to Catholic journals in the USA, which the Bishop may have seen, it is perhaps more likely that he saw the article in the more widely distributed Commonweal by Lewis Mumford in 1927, which praised Barry Byrne.
It is also notable that many of the clergy associated with Byrne in his earlier church building in America were of Irish background. It might well have been possible that there was some contact between the American Irish clergy and Cork clergy. There are unconfirmed reports that the Bishop saw some of his earlier work in the USA. In any event he stuck with Byrne, rejecting less adventurous designs.
Reaction to the Building
Initial reaction was fairly low key.
It may have suffered from a lack of local enthusiasm because it was designed by an outsider and architects in the hungry 1930's did not like to see work going to foreign architects.
It neither provoked much critical comment or much strongly expressed admiration. It was however illustrated in several international journals. In time the misleading impression also seems to have got around that the local supervising architect for the job, J R Boyd Barrett, had actually designed the Church. Byrne did no further work in Cork or in Ireland, and other Irish churches did not take any obvious inspiration from Turners Cross.
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Byrne after Turners Cross
The onset of the great depression hit Byrne very hard. Architectural work dried up or was scaled back.
Byrne closed his office and until 1945 he built little. Work as a building inspector paid the bills. Whereas in the 1920's he was a relatively young man, forty years ahead of his time, by 1945 when work became plentiful again fashions had changed and other new men arrived to replace the old. Byrne was by then over 60 years old.
After the war a number of churches were designed and built by Byrne. They were good, but none were as exciting as this one in Cork.
Byrne must also have smiled as the liturgical reforms of the Vatican Council belatedly endorsed many of his opinions on church design.
In his latter years the former office boy contributed many anecdotes to the researchers seeking details of the inner life of the long passed Frank Lloyd Wright Oak Park Studio years. Semi retired from 1953, he died in 1968. To this day his work is curiously neglected and his church in Cork is still unappreciated. A recent restoration has improved the look of the church.