One of the country's leading designers of Colonial-style houses during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s and the author of numerous books and magazine articles, Royal Barry Wills regularly published house plans that were widely adopted, especially in the Boston suburbs. When Wills and his wife moved to Winchester in 1954, he became a favorite architect among the town's residents. Although modernist architecture rivaled historical styles by midcentury, particularly for institutional buildings, the Christian Science church leaders in Winchester wanted to build in the “colonial style,” and thus they selected Wills. The church that he designed mixes Georgian and Greek Revival sources, alluding to New England church precedents without imitating any one period or style.