[NYer]

Oh my, ping!

[Argus]

The first one looks like the dump Godzilla took after he ate Tokyo.

[Salvation]

Architects gone awry!

[Baynative]

[PapaNew]

The physical reflects the spiritual. Those beautiful cathedrals of yesteryear have given place to the darkened minds of popular culture which confuses bad taste and misery for beauty and happiness.

[NYer]

Solid Rock Church in Monroe, Ohio
Nondenominational

Iglesia de la Consolación in Córdoba, Spain
Roman Catholic

[cloudmountain]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo, OOOOOGLY!!

Where is that infamous "crystal palace"??
I can't believe that they were designed and built TO BE Catholic Churches.

They belong to the Churches of Bad Taste!!

[ConservingFreedom]

The first four look like Star Wars transports.

[jocon307]

Thanks for posting this, one or two were not so, so bad.

I am aware of the controversy over the Christian Scientist place in DC. Supposedly it’s one of the best examples of Brutalist Architecture around.

I wondered if they’d have my old church, you probably know it NYer, Epiphany on 2nd Avenue and 22nd Street.

Beautiful old church burned down in the 60s, very shortly before Christmas iirc, shocking news it made the front page of the Sunday Times, above the fold with a big picture, again iirc.

Then for a while we went to Mass in an empty store front in Stuyvesant Town, I guess it had been a Whelan’s (remember those?) because we called it St. Whelan’s.

Then they built a hideous, gray, modern monstrosity.

Ah, the sixties.....a time of ruination and destruction. No wonder people got into drugs.

[ConorMacNessa]

These buildings go far beyond "ugly" - they are truly hideous!



"Dia shábháil ar fad anseo!"

Genuflectimus non ad principem sed ad Principem Pacis!

Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. (Isaiah 49:1 KJV)

[Ouchthatonehurt]

You can argue the architectural merits of any of these buildings. Some are good, others, not so much.
The common denominator to most all of them though is that they are “self referential.” In my opinion this is not appropriate to a house of worship - especially a Catholic church which should be sacramental.

[tflabo]

#3 needs a nose job.

[Fast Moving Angel]

I kinda like the one that resembles Stonehenge, but the third one looks like it’s flipping the bird (sorry). Very unattractive.

[JoeFromSidney]

The last one is labeled in what appears to be Thai. Is it a Buddhist temple, or some other church in Thailand?

[SES1066]

This one reminds me, in a very bad way, of a closed-in and jumbled Stonehenge. I'll take the original please!

[CrazyIvan]

I didn’t knoe Borg was a religion.

[JoeFromSidney]

The ugly Catholic ones are probably all post-Vatican II, when the Modernizers decided to throw away everything from the past and start over. As an example of where this notion can lead, there's a hideously "modern" Lutheran church in Finland, which dates to the independence of Finland early in the 20th Century. It's built into a hillside, and the "walls" are the stone layers in the interior of the hill. With independence, the Finns decided to go "modern" with a vengeance.

[Dagnabitt]

All beauties compared to Mecca.

[miss marmelstein]

So glad I live in Manhattan where most of the churches are very old and have deep roots in European beauty. I loathe ugly churches of any denomination. And I don’t like the modern synagogues (shuls) in my neighborhood, either. I long ago gave up on the gymnasiums that pass for Protestant churches.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Christ Lutheran Church (formerly St. Stephen's) in Chino, California. Where the cross is now on the building was once a Chi-Rho symbol. My boyhood church, I was a founding member along with the rest of my family.