The building was designed as a Christian Science church, its Classical Revival facade featuring columns and pediments that give it the formal dignity of a civic building. Carl Werner was a noted San Francisco architect, and the church at Funston and Clement Streets was among his most accomplished works. The approximately 20,000-square-foot building served the Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist congregation for decades before declining membership led to its sale. The building's relocation from religious to secular use preserved the structure while giving it a purpose that its architects could not have imagined.

Brewster Kahle founded the Internet Archive in 1996 with the ambition of providing "universal access to all knowledge." The Wayback Machine, the Archive's most famous tool, has captured hundreds of billions of web pages since its launch, creating a digital record of the internet's evolution. The Archive also preserves books, music, video, software, and other digital content, functioning as a library whose collection grows by millions of items per year. The Richmond District building serves as the Archive's headquarters and a public library, hosting events and providing free access to its digital collections.

The conversion of a 1923 church into a 21st-century digital archive says something about what San Francisco values. A city that tears down Fox Theatres and demolishes Cliff Houses found, in this case, a way to preserve a beautiful building by filling it with a purpose that matches its architectural ambition. The Internet Archive's mission -- preserving the world's knowledge -- has the scope and earnestness of a religious calling, and the building's vaulted spaces accommodate it with surprising appropriateness. Servers hum where hymns once echoed, and the congregation has been replaced by a global community of users who access the Archive's collections billions of times per year.