Excerpt from Souvenir Year Book and Parish Guide of the Catholic Church of Saint John the Baptist: Near the Intersection of Ouachita and Grand Avenues, Hot Springs, Arkansas; For the Year 1913 The church of St. John has proved a blessing not only for the local Catholics but also for the numerous visitors. Many a one made his peace with God here in our church, who had not gone to the sacraments for years at home. Finally, the many advertisements that are to be found in these pages and which are a great help to us, show that we have a large number of friends also among the business men. To those who have kindly patronized us by placing their ads with us, we extend our most sincere and hearty thanks, and as one good turn deserves another, we especially request that all our readers consult our list of advertisers before making their purchases. Hoping that the harmonious and amicable relations of the past between the pastor and the parishioners, between St. John's congregation and the outside neighbors shall continue in the future, we shall remain with best wishes to all. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

In the 1950s the brethren at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint John the Baptist in Collegeville, Minnesota—the largest Benedictine abbey in the world—decided to expand their campus, including building a new church. From a who’s who of architectural stars—such as Walter Gropius, Richard Neutra, Pietro Belluschi, Barry Byrne, and Eero Saarinen—the Benedictines chose a former member of the Bauhaus, Marcel Breuer. In collaboration with the monks, this untested religious designer produced a work of modern sculptural concrete architecture that reenvisioned what a church could be and set a worldwide standard for midcentury religious design. Saint John’s Abbey Church documents the dialogue of the design process, as Breuer instructed the monks about architecture and they in turn guided him and his associates in the construction of a sacred space in the crucial years of liturgical reform. A reading of letters, drawings, and other archival materials shows how these conversations gave shape to design elements from the church’s floor plan to the liturgical furnishings, art, and incomparable stained glass installed within it. The book offers a rare detailed view of how a patron and architect work together in a successful building campaign—one that, in this case, lasted for two decades and resulted in designs for twelve buildings, ten of which were completed. The post–World War II years were critical in the development of religious and architectural experiences in the United States—experiences that came together in the construction of Saint John’s Abbey and University Church and that find their full expression in Victoria M. Young’s account of the process. Using the liturgy of the mid-twentieth century as a cornerstone for understanding the architecture produced to support it, her book showcases the importance of modernism in the design of sacred space, and of Marcel Breuer’s role in setting the standard.