Lincoln's Lost Hyperbolic Paraboloid

During the late summer of 1959 a peculiarly-shaped building rose on the east end of Lincoln's main street.

Sporting a design that looked like a square sheet pinned down on opposing corners, yet ready to take flight, Lincoln's Community Methodist Church soon became a landmark for travelers between Missoula and Great Falls.

Technically called a hyperbolic paraboloid , the uniquely mid-20th century building soon became affectionately known as the Flying Diaper.

This week marks 60 years since Methodist Bishop Glenn R. Phillips of Denver dedicated the ultramodernist building as Lincoln's first formal house of worship on May 18, 1960.

The Lincoln Methodist Church, as an institution, got its start in 1956 when Rev. Hugh Herbert strolled in to the Dwight and Jessie Smith's Ponderosa Café for a meal and learned Lincoln didn't have a church building. The next year community members met several times with Rev. Herbert Burdsall and other members of the Methodist clergy, and on Dec. 5, 1957 the Lincoln Methodist Church was formally chartered.

According to a 1982 church history compiled by Jessie Smith, the church held services at the Lincoln Community Hall while fundraising and planning efforts got underway for a proper church building. The church bought property in February 1958. Timber from the land was sold to help fund construction costs. "Building Crusade" dinners and the sale of stationary, sporting an image of the building's model also raised funds. The Smiths, who also owned Ponderosa Hardware, donated building materials at cost.

Dwight Smith is credited for coming up with the radical design for the building.

"I honestly and truly believe, the (church) men's club... did most of the talking about it," said Barb Solvie, who was a member of the church at the time with then-husband Cecil Garland. "Dwight came up with it and I have no idea where he got it from."

By some accounts, he read about the radical design in a Popular Mechanics. Hyperbolic paraboloids made headlines in the '50s as architects experimented with new forms to meet the demand for modern designs after World War II. The design lacks traditional rafters, but takes advantage of geometry to create a strong but inexpensive form that can be created from a variety of materials. In Lincoln, the roof was composed of two layers of wood laid diagonally, which provided great load bearing strength, despite being relatively thin. Though they appear curved, hyperbolic paraboloids are composed entirely of straight lines.

The Great Falls architectural firm of Hoiland & Lund, at the time involved in a variety of projects throughout north central Montana, developed the plans for Lincoln's church.

Throughout the summer and fall of 1959 construction was in full swing under Smith's guidance as contractor. The building was closed in by December and on March 13, 1960, Burdsall held the first service in the still-unfinished church.

Though formally a Methodist church, Solvie said it served most of the protestant faithful in town and provided people with a place to go besides the bars.

"All I can tell you is it was a gathering place and we had a very good representation of all kinds of faiths that came there," she recalled, saying they had "lots of good music."

Radical building designs can be divisive, but Solvie doesn't recall anyone in the church who was really against it, largely because the design incorporated so many windows. "I think that was part of what was so good for a church. There weren't just a few windows. It just let all that light in; the Montana sun. It was wonderful."

Unfortunately, the buildings r design proved its downfall. How often it happened is debatable, but stories of daredevils riding snowmobiles over the top of the church in the winter, or riding bikes over it in the summer, aren't uncommon. Regardless, the roof began to have issues.

"They were having trouble with it leaking," church member Steve Copenhaver told the BVD in 2015. "It was made so there was straw above the layers and a tarp or plastic put over that."

Roof repairs around the 1980's unwittingly sealed the building's fate.

"Something happened and they cut the one layer all around the deal, so it left just one single layer holding it, clamped over the angle iron," Copenhaver said.

By 2001 the state declared the building unsafe and decreed it be torn down or condemned. Copenhaver said about a third of the congregation was against demolishing the landmark building, but he said there wasn't really an option to save it.

"If you'd ever been in there when the wind was blowing, it was 'creak, creak, creak' and you wondered when the roof was going to cave in," he said. "It was an angle iron structure and had iron that went underground to hold the concrete pillars on each end, so it was a matter of time before they were gonna give and the whole roof was gonna cave down."

Water had also accumulated in the roof over the years.

"When we tore it down, I mean about 40-50 gallons of water just ran all over right out of the roof. It was a surprising one," Copenhaver said.

In early May 2002, the Flying Diaper was demolished to make way for the current building.

Despite its nickname, the church represented a rare and iconic example of mid-20th century architecture. Hyperbolic paraboloids take multiple forms, but Lincoln's original Methodist Church stood out for both its dramatic look and the fact the unusual design found a home in a small mountain town.

As the Helena Independent Record reported May 17, 1960, "...the edifice of glass and native wood housed under a hyperbolic paraboloid roof provides a striking contrast along the border of one of the last wilderness areas in the nation."

"(Dwight Smith) wanted to do it. We weren't going to NOT let him build something he felt would be something special," Solvie said. "We should thank him that he ever came up with the idea. It was always a conversation piece, just like Sculpture in the Wild is making a huge hit with people. For years it was, 'if you ever get through Lincoln be sure to check out the Flying Diaper church.'"