MADISON Several years ago, when the Freedom From Religion Foundation first pondered a need for more space, it considered selling its headquarters downtown and buying a larger building elsewhere.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, a foundation co-president with her husband, Dan Barker, said she hoped they might buy a vacant church.

But after evaluating 20 or so sites, the couple decided to stay put and construct an addition to the nonprofit organizations current building. All for the better, they now say.

The addition, which staff members began moving into last week, keeps the organization at the corner of West Washington Avenue and North Henry Street.

The prominent spot is near Overture Center and the Madison Central Library and just blocks from the state Capitol and the UW-Madison campus.

We like to be in the thick of things, Gaylor said.

Indeed they do.

The organization, founded in 1976, promotes the separation of church and state with a tenacity that delights some and exasperates others.

Its second goal, to educate the public about atheism and agnosticism, elicits less public vitriol but is no less important to the organizations members.

Both goals now will be easier to pursue with the expansion, Gaylor said.

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Freedom From Religion Foundation quadruples space, adds staff