Added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 10, 2017

At just a bit over 7.5 square miles, Catalina Island’s big city Avalon is really a small town. You can walk across the main shoreline from end to end in about 20 minutes. But once you head inland, the terrain starts sloping pretty quick, and a leisurely walk through a quiet resort town can become your exercise for the week. From 1931 through the early 1990s, the Christian Science community of Avalon worked their hams, quads and calves while chugging up E. Whittley Avenue to the historic Christian Science Society building, overlooking Avalon Bay. 

This building is significant as the first one in Avalon built in a Spanish colonial revival style. it would set the tone for much of Avalon’s look and feel for the next half century. 

In the four decades since Avalon was surveyed and laid out by George Shatto in 1887, the city had gone through a few phases of boom and bust. A massive fire in 1915 destroyed about half the town’s buildings, meaning that Avalon was a mishmash of different architectural styles and eras by the time that William Wrigley, Jr. came around. Wrigley was one of the wealthiest men in America at the time. In addition to his chewing gum fortune, Wrigley owned the Chicago Cubs (Catalina was their spring training home from 1921-1951) and a vast real estate empire. In 1919 he bought the Santa Catalina Island Company, effectively giving him control over the island’s development.  

By 1929 much of Catalina’s municipal infrastructure was dramatically improved. New public utilities, new ships to ferry visitors to and from the mainland, hotels and residential housing, schools, a local quarry, new businesses – you name it, Wrigley funded it. 

Wrigley wanted an architectural style to give Avalon a coherent look and feel, and he found it in the Spanish colonial revival style employed for the Christian Science Society building. The style was all the rage in the 1920s across the channel in Los Angeles, and up and down the California coast. But while it wasn’t unique to Avalon, the style harkened back to Catalina’s past as one of the last Spanish land grants, and this connection to “old California” would have been useful for attracting tourists. The style still permeates Avalon. Look at the walkways, benches, signage, municipal buildings and many of the older businesses that line the waterfront today. Many were crafted with the same mission-like stucco and terracotta feel, often with local tiles embedded in creative ways. 

Catalina’s biggest project of the late ‘20s was undoubtedly the famous Catalina Casino, Avalon’s most iconic building, completed just a few months before the Christian Science Society. It was designed by the firm of Webber & Spaulding, also known for the NRHP-listed Harold Lloyd Estate in Beverly Hills. Construction was supervised by David Renton, designer of the Wrigleys’ NRHP-listed hillside home overlooking Avalon (visit #164). Wrigley asked that same team to build a new gathering space for the Avalon branch of the First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston; the local Christian Science community had previously met in a small bungalow nearby. Wrigley had a personal connection in his daughter-in-law Helen, a devout Christian Scientist herself. 

The Christian Science Society building was a challenging build. Steep slopes tend to make for difficult construction projects. Factor in the difficulty and expense of finding quality materials and craftsmen on a small island, and the fact that the casino was sucking up so many resources that same year, and it’s even more impressive that this building was finished on budget and on schedule in fall 1929. It was formally dedicated on August 16, 1931, once the building was free of indebtedness.

The building was designed by Hans Wallner, a young architect working for the Webber & Spaulding firm in the late ‘20s. Wallner’s plan was inspired by the 13th century Santa Croce chapel in Florence, Italy. As of the 1860s, that chapel was clad in a gleaming white marble facade. But there’s one etching floating around of Santa Croce’s much more austere facade from before the renovation, and you can kinda-sorta see how the low-pitched roof, triple door layout and the porthole-style circular window at the top are shared between the two buildings. Wallner’s take on Santa Croce was a “loose homage” I’d say.

If his inspiration was Italian, Wallner toned down many of the more baroque trappings of a typical Italian renaissance building. With the exception of some refined wrought iron lighting fixtures, and the Roman-style brickwork that lines the arched doors, the outside of the building is free of ornamentation, much more in line with the Spanish colonial revival style. It’s defined by simplicity and quality of craftsmanship and materials, not fanciness. You can see that in the main sanctuary, an austere room with hardwood floors of Douglas fir, exposed roof beams and clerestory windows. The bottom floor, where Sunday school was held every week for 60+ years, is even simpler, with concrete floors and plaster walls and ceilings. On the north side, a mission-style campanile reinforces the building’s connection to Catalina’s Spanish past.

The building’s NRHP nomination form also addresses the symbolic value of the Christian Science Society. In the years before it was completed, Avalon had developed a reputation as a fast and loose kinda place, with gambling, prostitution and liquor barges anchored just offshore (remember, this was during prohibition). This building, called “a gift to the town of Avalon by Mrs. Ada Wrigley” (William’s wife) and funded by Wrigley money, was a beacon of temperance and morality. It sent the message that their town was a town for law-abiding, ethical folk who didn’t drink and didn’t get divorced (that was verboten for Wrigley’s employees). Let’s assume the Wrigleys would have been cool with chewing gum in church, as long as it was Juicyfruit or Doublemint. 

The Christian Science Society held worship services here from 1931 through the early 1990s, when dwindling membership forced it to close. In 2011, the First Church of Christ, Scientist sold the building to a renovator, who renamed it “Overlook Hall” and rented it out as an event space for about a decade. 

The locals tell me that the place is permanently closed now. Redfin shows that it sold in 2021, and some of the staging pics suggest they were going for a residential buyer. Certainly didn’t look like anyone lived there when I visited in spring 2023. Will the bells of the campanile ring again? Who knows? But if you’re willing to hoof it up the very steep E. Whittley Avenue like the Christian Scientists used to, you can check out this significant symbol of Avalon’s past, one that helped to define what it would look like for years to come.

Thanks to Gail Fornasiere and Patty Salazar of the Catalina Museum for the historic picture

Sources & Recommended Reading

• Dira, Anna: Christian Science Society’s NRHP nomination form
• Kudler, Adrian Glick: “Converted 1929 Church on Catalina Designed by Hans Wallner” (Curbed LA, Jul 25, 2012)
• Sanford White, William with Steven Kern Tice: Santa Catalina Island: Its Magic, People, and History (White Limited Editions, 2002)
• “209 E Whittley Ave, Avalon, CA 90704” (Redfin)
• “HUNTINGTON PARK HAS NEW PASTOR” (Los Angeles Times, September 4, 1929 – accessed via ProQuest)
• “One year anniversary for Catalina’s Overlook Hall” (Catalina Islander, 2015)
• “Windle’s History of Catalina Island: Avalon Religious Organizations” (Catalina Islander, August 19, 1931 – via SmallTownPapers)
• Koyl, George S., editor: American Architects Directory (RR Bowker Company, 1955)
• Overlook Hall website