Talk:Wellspring Church

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. Track your hook after promotion. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Unsurprising (talk) 16:51, 19 October 2026 (UTC)

( Comment or view )

( Article history links:

• Thomas Moore (architect)
• Wellspring Church

)

Construction of Englewood Methodist Church

• ... that by using Thomas Moore's design for precast concrete panels, crews assembled the structure of Englewood Methodist Church (pictured) in just four days?

• Source: "One of the most unusual new churches in the Denver area, at least as far as construction is concerned, is going up at 3885 S. Broadway, Englewood. The new Englewood Methodist Church will feature innovations galore from its roof and walls made of 22 concrete panels weighing 33,000 pounds each ... Architect Thomas E. Moore of Denver designed the $260,000 structure and conceived the 40-foot-high tilted concrete panels that serve as wall and roof. ... The concrete panels’ enabled construction crews to raise the church in four days, using a giant crane to swing the 16-ton panels into place." Rocky Mountain News, 1964

• • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Interstate 24 in Tennessee and Template:Did you know nominations/Jotham's fable

Moved to mainspace by Dclemens1971 (talk). Number of QPQs required: 2. Nominator has 80 past nominations.

Dclemens1971 (talk) 00:00, 10 October 2026 (UTC).

This is a review of the church article only (for now).

Interesting article about a unique building, on fine sources, no copyvio obvious. I like the hook! The image is licensed and - while a bit dark and abstract at a glance - the best illustration of the hook we have. I'd love to see a pic of the finished nave in the article. I wonder if the infobox could do without a map, to not squeeze the refs. The image of the former church of the congregation sandwiches the text, - is it good enough? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:59, 10 October 2026 (UTC)

• Gerda Arendt this should not be on the "Approved" list until both articles in the nomination are approved. Can you check the second one? As for photos, alas, there is no Commons-eligible photo of the present-day nave out there. I've left a photo request on the talk page but this b/w one is the best we have. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dclemens1971 (talk • contribs) 22:25, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

  I can review the other later today. Next time I'll leave a ? icon at the end for a second article, sorry for missing it. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:04, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

  Mow to the architect: interesting life and work, on fine sources, no copyvio obvious. Both articles reviewed. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:03, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

Proposal: remove one instance of "2025-26 expansion" from first two paragraphs

The first paragraph says, "Wellspring expanded the building in a 2025–26 construction project." The next paragraph said, "Wellspring expanded the building in 2025 and 2026." Clearly, this was redundant—and redundant as well with the Architecture section, which said, "In 2025, Wellspring Church broke ground on an expansion project to build a new entrance facility, fellowship space, coffee bar and restrooms. The project is scheduled for completion in November 2026." I've combined the Building History and Architecture sections, which I trust will be uncontroversial considering their considerable overlap. Now the question is whether a relatively minor detail like an expansion project deserves to be in the intro. I'd argue no; at 550 words, the article needs very little by way of an intro, and the expansion is in no way as significant as the rest of the facts therein. PRRfan (talk) 19:07, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

Oh, by the way: I didn't mean to violate WP:BRD with this edit. The edit summary in the reversion said "please do not leave unsourced statements", not "don't remove the redundant sentence", so I took that to mean that sourcing was the concern. I therefore removed the redundant sentence, with a more explicit edit summary. PRRfan (talk) 19:16, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

A lead should summarize all the key points of the article, and the article is more than long enough to need a lead that summarizes the key points. Per MOS:LEAD, articles of at least 400 words should have a lead and distinct sections.

Moreover, architecture and history are distinct topics and should be treated distinctly within an encyclopedic article, not smushed together based on an arbitrary assessment of word count. Dclemens1971 (talk) 19:15, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

P.S. The 2025 construction mention was originally further down in the article before PRRfan moved it up, so if the proximity of the two mentions is a problem, it’s a problem of PRRfan’s making. Dclemens1971 (talk) 19:16, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

Well, no. I moved the 2025-26 expansion from intro to the "Building history" section. Dclemens1971 then readded it to the intro while leaving it in the "Building history" section, creating the "twice in two paragraphs" problem, and indeed the "thrice in 575 words" problem. PRRfan (talk) 19:24, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

In any case, while I salute the use of separate sections for Building History and Architecture in longer Wikipedia articles, insisting on them in short ones leads to faintly ridiculous outcomes. Just look at all the repetition in:

Wellspring's building at 3885 South Broadway was built as the Englewood Methodist Church. It was designed by Denver architect Thomas E. Moore and engineered by the firm of Ketchum, Konkel, Ryan and Fleming. The cornerstone was laid in June 1964, and the building was completed the following year. The $260,000 ($2.7 million in 2025) building was unusual for its time because it used 22 precast, prestressed concrete panels, which allowed crews to assemble its structure using cranes in four days. The stained-glass windows and light fixtures in the 440-seat nave were handmade by church members, saving $65,000 compared to commercial production. Wellspring expanded the building in 2025 and 2026...Wellspring's nave consists of a tent-shaped structure composed of 22 half-arches of prestressed concrete. The 14-foot (4.3 m)-wide panels were poured offsite and moved into position using cranes. The nave is 154 feet (47 m) long, 50 feet (15 m) wide and 40 feet (12 m) high with a interior ceiling height of 35 feet (11 m). The nave features 24 stained glass windows designed by Moore and handmade by the church's members at a cost of $10,000 ($103,809 in 2025). The use of the prestressed concrete panels created an accordion-like visual effect. The nave has been described as "visually dramatic and theatrical". The nave is next to a pre-existing education wing. In 2025, Wellspring Church broke ground on an expansion project to build a new entrance facility, fellowship space, coffee bar and restrooms. The project is scheduled for completion in November 2026.

The reader would be better served with a simpler, nonredundant accounting of facts:

Wellspring's building at 3885 South Broadway was built as the Englewood Methodist Church. It was designed by Denver architect Thomas E. Moore and engineered by the firm of Ketchum, Konkel, Ryan and Fleming. The cornerstone was laid in June 1964, and the building was completed the following year. The $260,000 ($2.7 million in 2025) building was unusual for its time because its nave consists of a tent-shaped structure composed of 22 precast, prestressed half-arches of concrete. This allowed crews to assemble its structure in four days. The 14-foot (4.3 m)-wide panels were poured offsite and moved into position using cranes. The nave is 154 feet (47 m) long, 50 feet (15 m) wide and 40 feet (12 m) high with a interior ceiling height of 35 feet (11 m). The 440-seat nave has 24 stained-glass windows designed by Moore and handmade by the church's members at a cost of $10,000 ($103,809 in 2025), saving $65,000 compared to commercial production. The use of the concrete panels created an accordion-like visual effect. The nave has been described as "visually dramatic and theatrical". The nave is next to a pre-existing education wing. In 2025, Wellspring Church broke ground on an expansion project to build a new entrance facility, fellowship space, coffee bar and restrooms. The project is scheduled for completion in November 2026.

PRRfan (talk) 19:35, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

The virtue of separate sections is that a reader interested in the architecture can go straight there, while a reader focused on history can scan that section. This is a standard approach in Wikipedia articles about buildings and I think it serves well here. Dclemens1971 (talk) 19:39, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that is why I said I salute the convention. But for this (again) short article, it seems unlikely that the benefit of enabling readers to rush pell-mell past [counts on fingers] four paragraphs to the Architecture section outweighs a simpler, more straightforward, and, again, less redundant presentation of facts.

Perhaps more pertinently, this article is about the church, not the building, and therefore, the information about the church's current building should be contained under a single subhead: "Building". One might insist on retaining the subsections "Building history" and "Architecture" but this would only underscore the absurdity of retaining the redundant text. PRRfan (talk) 20:01, 27 October 2026 (UTC)