Church tour

at the organ.

Yesterday after lunch, my friend John took me on a tour of the church where he works, Old St. Paul's Episcopal Church in downtown Baltimore. Old St. Paul's is the oldest church in Maryland and dates back to 1692, which was several years before I was born. As is typical for colonial-era parishes, they've gone through several enlargements, fire replacements, etc., and the current building was built about 150 years ago. Their rectory, on the other hand, dates to 1791 and is the oldest continuously occupied residence in Baltimore.

The current building is quite impressive. It must have been quite shocking for mid-19th century Episcopalian Marylanders, though, since the Oxford Movement (the push in the Church of England to escape Puritanism and move more towards "Catholic" ceremonial, ritual, and theology) had not yet come to the United States; the parish had chosen a renowned English-American architect, Richard Upjohn, who was the person much credited with launching the Gothic Revival in the United States. His other famous churches include Church of the Ascension and Trinity Wall Street in New York City.



St. Paul's is designed in the Romanesque style, rather than the traditional cruciate form. This means the nave (where the congregation sits) is more box-shaped rather than a long rectangle, and it would appear to seat close to 1,000. The interior space is highly decorated with fine art, sculpture, and stained glass, and it is obviously a very wealthy parish. The chancel and sanctuary are in a significantly narrowed area in front with a very ornate arched ceiling supported by Corinthian columns. Lots of gold leaf is used in the ceiling decor and there is a repeating pattern of the word, "Allelvia" (there is no U in the Latin alphabet). The white marble altar is backed by jeweled, mosaic reredos designed by Tiffany, including a big peridot gemstone in the center of the mosaic cross. The choir stalls include raised music racks, and this is one of the few churches in the country that still maintains a professional sounding boys choir for regular Sunday morning and evening services. I was also charmed by the sounding board over the pulpit, which used to be a fixture in large churches but which have gradually been disappearing as churches add better and better microphones and sound systems.

As I looked through some of the service leaflets and other worship materials around the narthex and in the sacristy, I was struck by the odd juxaposition of high church ceremonial with low church liturgy this place seems to use. They actually still do Morning Prayer on a regular basis on Sundays, instead of having Mass for every service.

It was easy to talk John into playing the organ for me. They have a fine 68-rank pipe organ with both a front organ in the chancel and an antiphonal organ in the back of the nave that includes a nice (though a bit underpowered for my tastes) trompette royal en chamade (those are the trumpet pipes that stick out horizontally that I love to use unexpectedly cause it makes babies cry). I'm not quite sure how to describe the manufacturer; the original organ was built by Roosevelt in 1859, but it has been enlarged by Skinner in 1916, Austin in 1970, and Möller in 1981; it sounds to me rather Möller-ish, but not completely, and I don't hear the Skinner at all. Some of the string and woodwind stops are particularly nice, and it has a lot of unusual mixtures. Since the organ is located back between the sanctuary and the chapel, out of sight of the congregation, John has to use a large video monitor to switch back and forth between views so he'll know what's going on during the services.

The windows in the church are quite beautiful. There's an odd mix of styles, though. About half of the windows are in the 19th century English style, including a lot of windows by Clayton and Bell dating back to the turn of the 20th century. They also have quite a collection of Tiffany windows, including the Lady Chapel, the Rose Window, a large window on the west wall, and about half of the windows on the sides of the nave.

On the right is a window from late 19th century England that features the Transfiguration on top and Christ in the Temple on the bottom.

While my personal glass tastes are more towards the Victorian English style, I was fascinated by the priceless Tiffany windows all over the church. Here are a couple of the nave windows. FIrst is a window called "Three Marys at the Tomb" and second is "The Angel of Faith." Both were done in 1903.