The Falls Church Anglican is one of the oldest and most historic congregations in the country, founded during colonial times with George Washington serving on the church’s vestry and building committee. These many years later, their all-new campus is located on a main artery into Washington DC, highly visible to hundreds of thousands of travelers every day.

The compact site includes a pre-existing five story office building and a new six level parking garage. Youth spaces, multi-purpose meeting rooms, and church administrative offices are located in the existing office building along with other tenants. The site is master planned for future phases to include a chapel, parish life center, kitchen, classrooms, and other support spaces.

The highlight of the campus is the new sanctuary building with a steeple tower that reaches 130 feet into the air and is visible from great distances along Arlington Boulevard. In order to preserve more space on the site for future buildings, while also giving the sanctuary the height and scale that it needed, the gathering and children’s spaces are located on the ground level, with the 900 seat worship space lifted to the second level.

In order to be instantly recognizable as a church, the building’s architecture is in a neo-gothic style, though simplified and modernized for today. The church is laid out in a traditional cross-shaped plan, which has been adapted to bring more people closer in community around the central focus of worship. The sanctuary space is filled with controllable natural light and draws eyes upward with its tall gothic arches and vaulted ceiling.

One of the unique aspects of this particular church is its blending of old and new, which includes the integration of sophisticated audio, video, and lighting systems into a traditionally-styled sanctuary. With the incorporation of this technology, the worship space can support a broad range of events and musical styles. The goal is to have a space that amplifies worship by being modern in its capabilities while remaining traditionally beautiful.