When it rains, and it does rain in East Texas, the 12,000-member Green Acres Baptist Church (Tyler, Texas) doesn’t call off services and so, with completion of the new 3,500 seat worship center, drop off facilities had to be built. Brannon Corporation and Architects, Fitzpatrick and Butler, were called upon to design a special structure.

Site requirements dictated a stair step roof along a 250-foot frontage of an existing street. However, no columns could project into the street and the canopies had to be kept low to avoid the wind blown rains of East Texas. The Brannon structural engineers settled on box beam trusses cantilevering over the street. The box members afforded less opportunity for nesting birds or for adventurous young climbers so common to East Texas while offering a clean line and adequate stiffness against uplift.

As you can see in the pictures, the result was a beautiful but functional way to get families from the street into the buildings without getting wet. Contractor for the project was C Construction of Tyler, Texas.