There wasn’t too much suspense ahead of the Bartholomew County Library Board’s vote last week to accept ownership — stewardship, really — of North Christian Church. This arrangement has been openly contemplated for many months since the dwindling congregation offered the church building and grounds as a generous gift to the community it served for more some 60 years.
In giving back by accepting the responsibility of care and preservation of this internationally admired jewel, the library board is giving our community an enduring gift. North Christian will have a new chapter as a gathering place for new generations, and that is a story to be celebrated.
Our community places value on the soaring spire of North Christian Church, a welcoming landmark for Columbus residents and visitors as familiar as any other, yet unique in the world.
We appreciate the significance of a structure that is regarded as among the foremost architectural treasures in a small city with a world-renowned collection of Modernist marvels.
In Columbus, Indiana, we understand that we are the keepers of a legacy. We know that we owe to the past and to our future a collective responsibility to ensure that cherished landmarks will continue to serve and to inspire.
To that end, our community owes a debt of gratitude to the congregation of North Christian Church, whose members saw fit to entrust its legacy all of us, through our public library. We believe they chose well, and we believe the library board also chose well in accepting this charge.
Library Director Jason Hatton and the board approached this decision with deliberate diligence and an understanding of the responsibilities and challenges that come with the gift of this 1964 Eero Saarinen-designed structure. The church and its grounds, designed by noted landscape architect Dan Kiley, both are listed as landmarks on the National Register of Historic Places.
“Now that the board has voted to accept the church and property, Hatton said the library would begin to use the outdoor grounds ‘almost immediately,’ including for activities for the library’s much-promoted summer reading program,” The Republic’s Mark Webber reported.
Hatton previously said that it could be a few years before the library launches adaptive reuses of the church building itself.
“We don’t see it as a library building. We see it as a community building. … This isn’t something the library wants to do by itself,” Hatton told The Republic in February. “I think every entity in Columbus and Bartholomew County understands we have to work together if we’re going to make an impact.”
Hatton has stressed the importance of public and private partners working to determine future uses and programming, which he said will mainly be focused on serving youth and families.
Libraries are about more than books. They are about community, service, and being open to all. In these respects, in serving as a welcoming gathering place under the library’s direction, North Christian will continue to live on well into the future.
