Edward Durrell Stone

In 2006, a Christian Science church building on Pomerado Road in Poway was demolished – as if it was not present for four decades. Absent landmark status, the work by world-renowned architect Edward Durrell Stone was taken apart by bulldozers after the “…congregation searched for a buyer, but found none.”

The building “…originally stood as a temporary exhibit at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair. The starkly geometric Christian Science Pavilion was intended to spend two years enticing fair-goers in for a religious experience, and then face the wrecking ball. But the pavilion found an unlikely second life nearly 2,500 miles away in the developing community of Poway, where an expanding congregation of Christian Scientists was ready for a new church,” according to the San Diego Union Tribune.

Reportedly, “In 1965, San Diego contractor and Christian Scientist Ralph Nelson saw the pavilion at the fair and negotiated with the main church in Boston to bring it to Poway. The church sold the pavilion – which originally cost $1.25 million – to the branch church for $1, on the condition the Poway congregation pay for shipping and reconstruction. Nelson oversaw the work of dismantling, packing and shipping the 50-ton building. It traveled in four large containers by freighter through the Panama Canal to Long Beach. There it was loaded onto trucks and shipped to Poway. At the time, a brief notice in Time Magazine described the project and put its cost at $79,000, which would be about $462,000 today. In Poway, Nelson supervised the reconstruction of the building, with its two seven-sided chambers and 25-foot-high, seven-sided glass skylight.”

“City Planner Patti Brindle said that the city studied whether the structure qualified for landmark status. But an expert consultant determined it lost its significance when it moved from the World's Fair site. The congregation had hoped to preserve the pavilion by selling it. In 2002, the congregation listed the building on eBay for its original price of $1.”

Partial List of San Diego Area Projects

Beyette, Residence of General (1948)
Coronado, California
*According to the Edward Durrell Stone Papers collection at the University of Arkansas, this project was designed with Associates Reese, Knowlton, Sloan & Holzinger in December 1948 for Brigadier General H.W. & Mrs. Beyette. In 1947, the Beyettes were renting at 320 7^th Avenue and by 1950 along with Hubert W., Idanthea, and Bonnie Beyette were living in a home built circa 1935 at 365 Glorietta Place. It is not clear if this home described as “detached carport with garden screening wall and trellis overhead; "California" open planning; interior/exterior flow; large hipped roof; horizontal wood siding; stone walls December 1948” was built.

New York World's Fair Christian Science Pavilion (1965)
16315 Pomerado Road, Poway
*Demolished in June 2006

Scripps Clinic & Research Foundation (1974)
10666 N. Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla