The architect of record for St. Maria Goretti was Wendell E. Rossman, of Rossman and Cartmell, designers of at least one Valley National Bank branch and one of the more peculiar buildings on the ASU Campus. This year on this is 1972. The parish was founded in 1967, they're just now celebrating their 40th year, and the older sanctuary building is still on site.

It's a concrete shell building and as of February 16, 1975, at least according to an article in the Arizona Republic, Rossman's firm had done fifteen concrete shell buildings. Examples in the valley, not necessarily theirs, included "a pair of United Bank branches, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors auditorium, South Mountain High School auditorium, and the nationally famous St. Maria Goretti Catholic Church in Scottsdale." Whether those others still stand, that's your guess.

This one is foam on a wooden frame, with a layer of gunite applied to the outside and a half-inch layer of amazingly consistent plaster applied to the inside. The original vision, evidently, was for a cross-shaped church, expanded to the west. That never happened so it remains symmetrical, or as good as symmetrical, under a 60-foot hyperbolic dome.

The designer for Rossman was Don Gadbury, who did all these stress caluculations by hand. The church got some attention in Italian magazines at the time -- Nervi and those guys were into that.

It's beautiful and well-kept inside, with near-abstract mosaic stations of the cross, a tidy balcony, an etched-glass Salvador Dali image of the crucifixtion hanging in midair, and one of the most powerful pipe organs in the area.