AD Profile - Metropolitan Memorial UMC

Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church has a rich history going back to the 1850’s. President William McKinley and Ulysses S. Grant both regularly attended services at Metropolitan in their time, but as the city of Washington grew, the original church building was sold to the government and subsequently closed. In 1931, the construction of their present facility was underway. By 1957, the church was too small and an expansion of the main sanctuary was in order. Now, 50 years later, the church has made the decision to re-evaluate the existing conditions of the Main Sanctuary, Great Hall and Vestry in order to grow and expand with the changing times.

Acoustic Dimensions worked with the church in the facility restoration and improvement program that included overcoming acoustics issues and upgrading the audio and video systems. Metropolitan places a strong emphasis on their traditional music ministry and the high, vaulted ceiling coupled with reflective surfaces found in the main sanctuary create natural acoustics that are highly responsive and reverberant. A new sound system was needed to improve speech intelligibility and sound isolation issues were addressed. The church also desired a permanent video production system and archival recording for this room, with the intention of producing DVD recordings of services for distribution as well as live web streaming. Additionally, audio and video feeds from the Sanctuary to both the Vestry and great Hall were provided via fiber optics allowing these ancillary rooms to be used as overflow spaces.

The section of the church known as the Great Hall opened in 1999 to serve as a place to host events such as the church’s contemporary worship service, open forum discussions, adult education, music concerts, receptions and choir rehearsal. The acoustics of the Great Hall needed to be sufficiently controlled to promote the ease of listening to the spoken word. The tall, pitched ceiling and sound reflective finishes made this room very reflective and noise from the HVAC posed a problem. Acoustic treatments were provided to improve control of room reflections and to reduce mechanical noise. In addition, a new sound system was installed to provide greater clarity and intelligibility. A video projection system was also in order to allow the Great Hall to be used for movies, presentations or as overflow seating for the Sanctuary.

The Vestry is used primarily for theatre productions and meetings for outside groups. Located directly beneath the sanctuary, it consequently gets a regular amount of “over-flow” from the Main Sanctuary. The addition of a sound system, portable control booth and video projection system with motorized screen were provided to support the large majority of its anticipated uses.