USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 21
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Doctor Muhlenberg came to New Haven in August, 1859 to lay the cornerstone of the new Christ Church. His sermon pleaded for free churches and pointed to the success of his experiment in New York. The rector's address boldly and eloquently supported his argument, and caused a sensation in the city and the diocese. The Church periodicals were soon full of articles and letters sup- porting both sides of the argument.
In Connecticut, as elsewhere, the conservatives were up in arms. They had a proprietary feeling about their pews and could see nothing wrong in relegating strangers and visitors to the gallery, or in letting the vestry reserve a couple of back seats for the poor. They cried that free churches would never pay their own way, or afford to contribute to missions or other causes. The free-churchers replied that the pew-rent system was snobbish, exclusive, and in- consistent with American democracy. It discouraged the Christian ideal of voluntary responsibility for the right use of material possessions.
Eventually the free-churchers had the better of the argu- ment, and after 1870 began to win over even conservative Con- necticut. Rector after rector took his stand on their side, following the example of Christ Church, New Haven, which in 1880 in- troduced the pledge and envelope system. In Middletown Samuel D. McConnell urged the abolition of selling seats, and suggested annual family pledges. As usual, the result was a larger income. St. John's, New Haven, reaped a similar reward by casting out pew rent and welcoming free seats and weekly pledges. Trinity Church,
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CHRIST CHURCH, BETHANY, 1809. Classical style of the early Nineteenth Century. (Photograph for Historic American Build- ings Survey Archives, Library of Congress. )
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OLD TRINITY CHURCH, BROOKLYN, an example of Georgian elegance, was erecte 1770-1771. (Photograph by Stanley F. Mixon. Historic American Buildings Sur vey Archives, Library of Congress. )
Portland, adopted the duplex envelope in 1890 and thereafter seldom resorted to subscriptions. Next year St. Andrew's, Meriden, abandoned rented pews, made all seats free, and adopted the pledge system. The rector publicly hailed the change as a "mighty re- formation," which came without friction or discord, and in the first year increased the contributions by a thousand dollars.
Some parishes made the transition gradually. Christ Church, Hartford, in 1881 made all seats free at Evening Prayer. The conservatives were fighting a rearguard action against the steady advance of Christian democracy. By the time of World War I, Bishop Brewster could proudly announce to the Diocesan Con- vention that pew rent was a thing of the past.
THE CHURCH: MEETING HOUSE STYLE
The prevailing style of church architecture in the early 1800's, inherited from the colonial period, was still that of the meeting house. Until the Gothic Revival after 1820, the massive timber frame set on stone "footing," clapboard siding, cedar shingles, and round-headed windows were the distinguishing marks of an Episcopal church. The Georgian style inspired a trend towards more ornament, particularly in the steeple, which sometimes had an open arcade or a bell-like dome. A local artisan might add carving or lattice work to the gallery front, or an ele- gant doorway with fluted pilasters, surmounted by a palladian window. The first church in Portland, erected in 1789-1791, con- tained some notable wood-carving, which was lost when the building was burned by vandals, to the deep grief of Dean Samuel Hart of Berkeley Divinity School across the river.
Until after the Gothic Revival, the interiors displayed little change from the colonial meeting house. There was a slight ad- vance toward a more churchly atmosphere in the greater insistence upon the correct eastern position of the chancel. During the post- Revolutionary period, Episcopal churches generally displayed the "three-decker" chancel, consisting of the communion table, backed by the clerk's desk and fairly overwhelmed by a huge pulpit equipped with the traditional velvet cushion. The whole was surrounded by a semicircular communion rail, often without kneeling cushions. A touch of elegant dignity sometimes was added by placing behind the pulpit a palladian window, or a triple orna-
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mented panel with the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer in gold letters. In some churches the designer thoughtfully provided a tiny vesting room under the pulpit, where the parson could pull off his surplice and don the black gown for his sermon. But often the vestry was in the rear near the entrance, and the preacher had to leave the desk, walk the length of the center aisle, put on the robe, and retrace his steps with a soft swish of its voluminous folds.
The choir gallery, of course, was in its proper place in the rear. Frequently, the gallery was prolonged partly along the sides, and was upheld by stout pillars. The pillars often tempted the workmen to indulge in classical flutings and moldings, and even gracefully turned Ionic capitals. The reading desk and the pulpit also offered a chance for decoration. The former sometimes had paneled doors, which were ceremoniously closed after the parson entered it. Many a pulpit had fluted pilasters or an ornamented cornice, and a few were surmounted by huge sounding-boards, held in place by metal rods or firmly attached to the wall.
The new and more "elegant" churches were costly and, as cash money was not plentiful, required large gifts of West India goods, timber, stone, iron work, and glass, as well as the inevitable rum for the workmen and for the festive "raising" of the frame. Some of the contributions have a quaint flavor, like Noah Webster's gift to the first Christ Church in Hartford - £3, payable in seven dozen of his spelling books. In 1820 St. James's Church, New London, was astounded to receive a legacy of $100 to paint the church from one Michael Omensetter, an eccentric who had never attended any church. The parishioners never could decide whether or not he intended to rebuke them for neglecting to paint the church for too many years.
The churches built between the Revolution and the Gothic Revival would seem almost starkly plain today. Their beauty consisted in their sound construction and classical lines, and the simple dignity of their cornices and moldings. The only color- ful notes were the red velvet or damask pulpit and desk cushions and the cover of the communion table, and sometimes the soft blue of the arched ceiling. Occasionally the interior walls were tinted pearly-gray, which reflected softly the light streaming from the pale yellow or green window glass.
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LIGHTING
Artificial lighting was rare until after the 1820's and, es- pecially in the country towns, the worshippers carried their own candles to Evening Prayer. Even a city church like Christ Church in Hartford used candles until 1822, when the young men sub- scribed to buy whale-oil lamps. The sexton assumed the fussy task of cleaning and trimming, and collected fifty cents every time he lighted them. Gas was piped into the church in 1849, about the time it came to the city. Some of the wealthier churches were the proud owners of many-branched chandeliers, adorned with cut prisms and beads to sparkle in the soft light. A few of these lovely fixtures have been discovered tucked away in attics and closets, and have been restored to their pristine beauty.
HEATING
Until after 1830 few churches were heated, for stoves were regarded as a senseless luxury. A footwarmer filled with coals from the hearth at home was deemed comfort enough, and was some- times considerately passed to a less fortunate neighbor to ward off chillblains. The first stoves were introduced over the determined opposition of conservatives, and were huge iron molochs, which swallowed up cordwood at an alarming rate.
Trinity Church in Branford about 1825 installed a stove with the pipe projecting in unsightly fashion from a window. St. Andrew's, Meriden, had a "box" stove set on a brick hearth in the center. The two pipes ran through windows at each end of the church, and were mistakenly supposed to keep the stove from smoking. The soot condensed into greasy black drippings, caught in pails hung at the joints. St. James's, New London, thrust the stove (shaped like an obelisk) into a corner outside the pews. Although its effectiveness was slight, non-churchmen regarded it as "a need- less and profane indulgence." Furnaces did not appear until the middle of the century. One of the first parishes to buy one was Christ Church, Hartford, in 1843. Nobody was sorry to part with the old stoves, which had served since the winter of 1815-1816.
FURNISHINGS
To most people proper furnishings and decorations probably seemed more important than heating, and were expertly handled
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by the ladies. To an Episcopalian of the early 1800's the church would have seemed incomplete without fringed and tasseled cushions of damask or velvet for the desk and the pulpit. There were no dossals because altars were not set against the chancel wall. It caused surprised comment, when Christ Church in Hart- ford installed an altar with a reredos in 1879. Altar crosses, candles and vases were virtually unknown until after the Oxford Revival. Usually, the altar furnishing was confined to linen and many churches used a white linen cloth with fringe five or six inches wide.
Communion vessels generally were simple and elaborately decorated chalices were practically never seen. Some churches, especially in the country, were content with pewter communion sets, which often included a large tankard. Some sets still owned by parishes were made by Connecticut craftsmen, such as Jacob Whitmore and William Danforth, who flourished in the late 1700's and early 1800's.
No parish would have dreamed of being without a ponderous Bible for reading the lessons. Buying the huge tome, with its gilt-edge pages and metal clasps, was a solemn and expensive business. Until well into the 1800's many church Bibles came from England, and were inscribed on the fly-leaf as the property of the parish. A few of the finer ones are still preserved as parish treasures and are kept in safes and bank vaults.
BELLS
Until long after the Revolution many a church did not own a bell. One bell in town (usually in the Congregational steeple) was considered enough and was regarded as community property. For many years the church in Guilford used the Congregational bell by special permission on feast and fast days. In Middletown the Episcopal and Congregational parishes jointly owned a bell, which was used by the town to call meetings and firemen. In New London the bell of St. James's Church was considered as a public concern, and when it was recast and enlarged, the subscribers included non-churchmen, even two Jews. Christ Church, Hart- ford, had no bell until 1811, when Congregationalists and Baptists helped to buy it. Even as late as 1839, when a new bell was bought for the present tower, the town insisted upon considering it a
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public convenience, and voted that it should be rung at noon and for nine-o'clock curfew in the evening.
Chimes are a fairly recent luxury. It was a sensational event, in the late 1860's, when the Church of the Good Shepherd in Hartford hung a set. Christ Church in the same city had no chimes until 1913. The innovation was one of many results of the Gothic Revival that swept over the Church in the middle 1800's. This effort to revive old-world mediaeval customs inspired the gift of chimes to Christ Church, New Haven, in 1906, after the rector had suggested that "a chimeless tower was almost as bad as a towerless church."4 He started the custom of ringing them before services, thrice daily for the angelus, on national and other holidays, and for lighting the Christmas tree.
NEW TASTES
Until about 1830 the churches of the Georgian era displayed a simple grace. White and trim, they stood by the village green, surrounded by groves of "poplars with their noise of falling showers."" But architecture, like all else in America, was subject to the sudden changes in feeling and taste of a new, mobile, and experimenting people. The churches of the early national period suffered from alteration and "modernizing." The principal change usually was the removal of the great pulpit, which frequently was the most handsome feature of the interior. Another striking change was the removal of the central square pews with doors, to make way for a broad aisle with slips on each side. Organs came down from the rear galleries, along with the choirs, and were placed on one side of the chancel, with a vestry room on the other side. As neither pastors nor people knew much about church architecture, remodeling often was left to a local carpenter who knew as little or less. When he had completed the transformation, the building sometimes had lost all resemblance to "churchly" character.
The restless desire to remodel was encouraged by the re- vival of Greek temple architecture, which received great prestige from the influence of Thomas Jefferson. The revival produced some churches that were meritorious from a purely architectural standpoint, but impressed many Churchmen as quite unreligious. The popularity of massive brownstone construction encouraged
"Tennyson, "Lancelot and Elaine."
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the temple style. The result was such neo-classical monuments as the second churches in Middletown and Portland - strongly built as fortresses, with massive clock towers and long rectangular windows. The one in Middletown was transformed into a public library after only forty years, and the one in Portland was succeeded by a Gothic edifice. A much pleasanter adaptation of the Greek style is St. Luke's, South Glastonbury, in which brick walls, white pillars, and a white bell tower give an impression of refinement rather than mere massive strength.
The confusion of styles, including even Egyptian, de- generated into sheer tastelessness and ignorant disregard of the requirements of liturgical worship. Late in life Bishop Thomas March Clark of Rhode Island (formerly rector of Christ Church, Hartford) recalled the growing lack of churchly taste when he was ordained in 1836. With some exaggeration he dismissed the preva- lent styles as "utterly destitute of beauty or any distinctive religious character."5
THE GOTHIC REVIVAL
The Bishop spoke these words at the fiftieth anniversary of Christ Church, Hartford, in a building that illustrated how much church architecture had changed since his youth. The "new look" was one aspect of the Gothic Revival, a true revolution in the Church. It was a phase of that startling change of intellectual climate known as the Romantic Movement. It transformed the attitude of intelligent people from contempt to admiration of the Catholic and romantic Middle Ages. It prepared the way for a revival of Catholic theology, doctrine, liturgy and piety, which caused profound changes in ecclesiastical architecture, worship, music, and social outlook.
Because of its appeal to the eye, the transformation in architecture was the movement's most impressive feature. It did not begin within the Church, but among the antiquarians and archaeologists, the poets, and the sentimental mediaevalists. Around 1700 the English learned world studied many books of "antiquities" and quaint county and parish histories. Acquaintance with such tomes became part of the education of a gentleman. They were "embellished" with handsome engravings, including many of picturesque, ivy-covered Gothic churches, like the one
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at Stoke Poges, the inspiration of Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard.
This peculiar literary culture gradually nurtured a senti- mental "Gothicism," especially in certain poets of the middle 1700's. They and their admirers affected the "Gothic Mood" of awe and gentle, elegant melancholy. Like John Milton in Il Penseroso they liked to
walk the studious cloister's pale,
And love the high-embowed Roof,
With antick Pillars massy proof,
And storied Windows richly dight,
Casting a dimm religious light."
Gray fairly steeped himself in mediaeval history and literature, and Warton voiced the backward look toward Gothic:
"Nor rough, nor barren are the winding ways Of hoar Antiquity, but strown with flowers."
Warton defended Gothic art against the disapproval of Georgian classicists, and wrote the first published effort to trace its origin and growth.
There comes a time when a nation tires of the prevalent culture and yearns for novelty. By the 1750's, some intelligent people began to turn from the classical formality of Greco-Roman architecture and from the canons of "correct taste" that moulded the dignified prose and carefully turned heroic couplets of con- temporary literature. A few found a new world of delight in "barbarous" Gothic, and in the Reliques of English mediaeval ballads collected by Bishop Percy. The next generation took a like pleasure in the eerie spirituality of Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel, and in the mediaeval Gothic setting of Sir Walter Scott's novels.
Sentimental and antiquarian Gothicism expressed a deep reaction against the reasonableness, cool intellectualism, Deism, and urbanity of the early 1700's. It opened the door to the Romantic Movement in literature and to the Catholic revival in religion. Its varied elements were blended in the early French Catholic romanticist, Chateaubriand, whose Genius of Christianity appeared in 1802. The book is so long and complicated that one wonders how it could have been so often translated and so popular. The explanation is that it exactly expressed the feelings of many
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informed people. By 1815 the new mood had become so fixed that few could share the attitude of the historian Edward Gibbon, who once described a French Gothic cathedral as a "monument of superstition."
Although little valued by "refined" people, Gothic art never wholly ceased in England during the long reign of classicism after the time of Inigo Jones in the 1630's. It survived because it was cherished by local craftsmen who repaired the old parish churches. Gothic churches were erected even in the 1600's, and the style crossed the Atlantic with the first colonists of Virginia. Conservatism, sentiment, religious tradition, and respect for sur- roundings kept it alive at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. But by about 1650 it had ceased to be fashionable, and thereafter for a century a new Gothic building was rare and freakish. After the first generation in Virginia, the tradition died in the American colonies, and the classical style of Sir Christopher Wren reigned until after 1800.
The sentimental revival of Gothic did not long remain purely literary. It soon became a cultural interest of gentlemen like Horace Walpole, who inhabited a "Gothic" castle and popularized the style not as a mere curiosity but as real architecture. In 1742 appeared Batty Langley's Gothic Architecture Improved by Rules and Proportions. This was the first in a long series of finely il- lustrated books, including John Britten's Antiquities and Pugin and Willson's later Specimens of Gothic Architecture. These caught the attention of professional architects, like James Essex and James Wyatt, who began to design Gothic buildings. It soon became the fashion to have a Gothic villa, or at least a summer house with pointed arches, and the more sentimental and eccentric even erected imitation Gothic ruins, which the gardener carefully shrouded in ivy.
The architectural vogue gradually inclined toward a senti- mentally religious mood, as the reaction against classical rationalism progressed. Gothic features began to creep into church building, even in distant Connecticut. The first Christ Church in Norwich, completed about 1750, was a wooden classic temple with long Gothic windows. The architect might well have seen a copy of Langley's book.
Erection of new Gothic churches was long delayed for the
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GRACE CHURCH, HAMDEN. Interior. (Photograph by Everett H. Keeler, Historic American Buildings Survey Archives, Library of Congress. )
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GRACE CHURCH, HAMDEN. Cross Section. (Drawing by F. Alton Clark and Fred W. Fricke, Historic American Buildings Survey Archives, Library of Congress. )
OF STRUCTURE
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GRACE CHURCH, HAMDEN, was erected in 1820. Illustrative of the Classical Revival style. (Photograph by Everett H. Keeler, Historic American Buildings Survey Archives, Library of Congress. )
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ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, NORTH HAVEN, was erected 1834-1835. Illustrates the Gothic Revival style of church. (Sketch by John Warner Barber, for his Connecticut Historical Collections, 1836. Original in Connecticut Historical Society. )
late 1700's was the age of Deism and "enlightenment." The higher classes tended to regard religion as political, and truly religious folk of the "lower orders" frequented Dissenting chapels, where religion was far removed from Gothic "popery." The officially anti-religious accent of the French Revolution thoroughly alarmed the British aristocracy in the 1790's and their conversion to piety inspired a movement to build Gothic churches in neglected dis- tricts. Before 1830 the Church Building Society encouraged an almost incredible number of such churches, constructed of brick, which was cheaper than the traditional stone.
Except in isolated instances, Gothicism in the United States was delayed because of the Greek Revival promoted by that in- defatigable amateur architect, Thomas Jefferson. The Gothic movement began to grow about 1815, partly under the auspices of Ithiel Town, the designer of Trinity Church in New Haven and of Christ Church, Hartford. Articles praising Gothic as the proper eccleciastical architecture began to appear in Episcopalian periodicals, especially the Connecticut Churchman's Magazine. In the 1820's the swing to Gothic accelerated and inspired some notable churches in the eastern cities. Most of them were not truly Gothic; they were meeting houses with lancet windows, battlements, pinnacles, and other ornaments.
The true Gothic church waited for the theological and liturgical revival stemming from the Oxford Catholic Movement of the 1830's in the Church of England. One of its American friends, Bishop John Henry Hopkins of Vermont, in 1836 published his immensely influential Essay on Gothic Architecture, said to be the first book of its kind in the United States. Greater than he was the inspired architect, Richard Upjohn, whose churches were con- vincing because he understood and loved the Catholic theological, doctrinal and liturgical principles behind the architectural struc- ture. His Trinity Church in New York and his widely circulated book of country church designs began a new era. "By some miracle," it is said, "he got Gothic feeling into his work, and in- duced the backward public to accept it."6 His style had many imitators, and his writing started a tradition that flowered in Ralph Adams Cram's Church Building (1901) and Henry Adams's Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1905.)
Gothicism appealed to many Connecticut Churchmen,
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striking a sympathetic chord in their traditional love of liturgical and sacramental religion, inherited from the seventeenth-century divines through Doctor Samuel Johnson. By the 1840's the long reign of classical meeting houses was nearly over, and parishes were replacing them with Gothic churches of Portland brownstone. A typical example is St. James's, New London, designed by the master Richard Upjohn in a somewhat ornate style. About twenty years later his disciple, Henry Dudley of New York, designed St. Andrew's in Meriden, an early English edifice with a large recessed chancel. In the following decade Portland abandoned its Greek Revival temple for an equally massive Gothic building, with a- bundant stained glass and carving and a chancel paved with marble. Its better features were due largely to the sound taste of the rector, James Field Spalding.
The gradual progress from colonial meeting house to liturgical Gothic church is perhaps most strikingly illustrated by the four churches of St. Michael's parish, Litchfield. The first (1749) was a stark meeting house with a towering pulpit. The second reflected the late "Colonial" taste, with a chancel at the east end and a western tower for the bell. It was sold in 1851 and was succeeded by another wooden building in the "Carpenter's Gothic" style. The present church, erected in 1919-1921, is de- corated English Gothic, representing the culmination of the Revival. It is distinguished by a lovely central tower, a huge western rose window, an unusually spacious chancel, and beautiful woodcarving and marbles. Some of the glass suggests the jeweled blazonry of Chartres Cathedral, and the floor tiling is worth a special visit.
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