As a Christian Scientist , Mathews was commissioned to design the First Church of Christ , Scientist in San Francisco ( 1912 ) ; for this and again for the similar Third Church of Christ , Scientist ( 1917 ) he used a Byzantine-Romanesque style in variegated brick with polychrome terracotta decoration . Writing in '' The Architectural Review '' , William Winthrop Kent singled the Third Church out for special praise . It has now been converted into housing for seniors . Later in his career , Mathews was a proponent of Renaissance revival architecture ; an example of his commercial designs in this style is the highly ornamented 447 Sutter Street ( 1916 ) , for Pacific Gas and Electric . He also designed government buildings in Sacramento ; in 1919 he won the $ 500 prize in the competition to design a new courthouse for Santa Barbara , but it remained unbuilt for lack of funds , and after the 1925 earthquake , a design by William Mooser , the second-place entrant , was built instead . The base of Douglas Tilden 's 1907 monument to Padre Junipero Serra in Golden Gate Park is also by Mathews
1925 earthquake
1925 Santa Barbara earthquake
Edgar Mathews