This church dates from 1962 and is the design of T.S. Montgomery, who shows a sure hand and a great deal of taste and experience here. Plan, siting, relationship of inside to outside, humane scale and the use of materials are all very professionally handled.

(Who was he?)

That really distinctive front facade, with all those pre-cast concrete squares, faces Indian School right where Indian School takes a curve to avoid splashing into the canal. The facade faces straight north (Montgomery avoiding the sun, good man) and a closer look reveals the concrete 'screen' does exactly what you want it to do: it offers physical and visual and psychological protection for the floor-to-ceiling windows in the sanctuary, a window that's expansive in the inside and virtually hidden on the outside, something like a one-way mirror.

What's that silly old architectural-psychology thing about "prospect / refuge"? Here the treatment of one wall makes this room a protected "refuge" from the outside, and a relaxed and open "prospect" from the inside. Too bad the windows only overlook Indian School likely widened since the original build. But you can't have everything.

The use of repeated pre-cast concrete elements is consistent with a lot of other places in the valley as a regular mid-Century design tactic. It takes at least two shapes.

One is the repeated concrete or masonry forms as ornament, like at the nearby Valley Ho, where there's a sort of repeated, uh, emblem all over the building which gets more eccentric the more you look at it. You could see the repeated concrete fins around the Safari Valley National Bank branch, and the concrete panels around the former Chambers Belt Building on 24th Street, as the same sort of thing. Both of those were designed by Frank Henry when he worked for Weaver and Drover, and the concrete work was done by Perry Wells.

The other variety is an integrated modular concrete brise soleil (which is probably traceable back to Le Corbusier ultimately but whatever). There are lots of those around Scottsdale as freestanding walls with entertainingly various concrete patterns. Three more good integrated examples come to mind -- the legislative expansion at the Arizona State Capitol:

... and the Health Services Building at the ASU Tempe campus, with a similar northern wall facing University:

...and acres of the stuff at the Mesa Civic Buildings:

Here at the First Church of Christ Scientist, Montgomery uses the masonry on two facades. Otherwise the building is well-guarded against the southern sun -- with one brilliant exception.