BUILDING MEETING-HOUSES by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 26, 1877

BUILDING MEETING-HOUSES.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

Every year now, Seventh-day Adventists are adding quite a number of meeting-houses to the number previously built; hence it becomes a matter of importance that they should be built right. Any speaker knows that there is a vast difference in houses of the same capacity, so far as easy speaking and ready hearing is concerned. In some comparatively small houses it is almost impossible to make an audience hear, while in others quite large, a whisper can readily be heard in any part of the house. This great difference is simply in the arrangement of the house.

The house we have just finished at Rome, New York, we regard as a perfect success in every direction. There is no ring to it. You can hear the lowest conversation from any part of the room. The house is thirty-two feet wide, fifty-four feet long, and the studding is twenty feet; but the ceiling overhead is dropped down two feet, making it only eighteen feet between the floor and the ceiling. The house is set up some two feet above ground, which makes it of fine proportions. It looks well.

The blinds outside run two feet higher than the windows, the top blind being stationary. We have a hall eight feet wide, running the width of the house, excepting the gallery stairway. For the gallery we have a room which we value very highly. As usually constructed, galleries are a nuisance. In this case we put the ceiling over the entry as low as it would do; then we projected the gallery floor three feet out over the audience room, which really adds to the looks of the room. This gives us a room in the gallery 11x32 feet. Then we run the ceiling up on the rafters, making the room twelve feet high, and it has two windows. Between the gallery and the audience room there is a light partition hung on pulleys, which we can open or close as we like. When the lower room is crowded we open this, and have a large gallery. When it is not we close it. In this room is a small stove. Here we have our prayer-meetings and all small gatherings. In the winter we do not have to warm up the whole body of the house for a little prayer-meeting; and then how lonesome it seems for eight or ten to get together in a large room for a small meeting!

Altogether, we value this room very highly. The additional cost of the house is but a trifle.

Instead of having a great high platform which lifts the speaker’s feet about as high as the heads of his audience, and puts his head where he gets all the hot and impure air, our platform is only sixteen inches high, which is plenty high enough. It is seven feet wide and sixteen long. This is very convenient on many accounts.

Instead of having two heavy sashes in each window, we have four light ones, the two middle ones being stationary, the upper and lower hung on pulleys. These small sashes of course can be easily managed with little danger of breaking. The house is also frescoed inside. This cost a little more than the ordinary hard finish, but it adds greatly to the appearance. The house is warmed by two large stoves placed nearly in the centre at each side. This affords nearly an equal warmth to all parts of the house, and brings the audience forward and more together. There being two chimneys, the pipe goes straight up, avoiding a long stretch of pipe, and that which is sometimes the case, oppressive heat over the speaker’s head.

The cost of this house was about $2,500. If brethren wish to build a house of this cost, we think they would have to try many times before getting so good a pattern. The house is well finished throughout. A house of the same size with cheaper finishing could be built probably for $300 less. If any do not wish a house as large as this, 28x42, 16 ft. posts, are good proportions. I have tried several of these dimensions, and find it exceedingly easy speaking in them. I should never build a house 30x40, or in that proportion. Above all do not make a great, massive pulpit, or a high platform, nor fail to hang your windows on pulleys. D. M. Canright.