Some mental doors flew open as I reflected recently (June 11) on the Burd Children’s Memorial Then and Now. I suddenly appreciated how profoundly the Memorial contributes to the experience and message of all St. Stephen’s today. 

A significant part came from its original purpose when built 30 years after the church of 1823. Yet much grew out of radical adjustments to the church and its use over time.

Especially today. Adjustments will continue as we orient our activities and worship to an evolving NOW when we reopen on July 4.

I'll present these thoughts in two Reflections. I’ll first consider the architectural or physical impact of the Memorial within the church over time—especially with changes. I’ll mention the Memorial’s evolving religious role throughout. Yet I’ll concentrate on that religious message in the second Reflection.

How one memorial physically changes a church

The Burd Children’s Memorial grew out of one couple’s grief, faith, and devotion to St. Stephen’s—to which the church vestry, with an architect and sculptor, responded with sweeping imagination.

Upon his death in 1848, Edward Shippen Burd’s will conveyed his wish for an ambitious monument in marble to his three children who died shortly before. It was to be placed, if possible, within the church as a memorial; actual burials occupied the adjacent churchyard. Downplaying personal pride and loss, the Burds proposed this memorial as a contribution to, among other things, the activity of the church.

The compact interior of the church, given the meager size of the city block that it occupied, tolerated little of any size, however.

The solution, proposed by the church architect approached by the vestry, Richard Upjohn, literally involved “lateral thinking:” the monument could be the centerpiece of a new side “chapel” that projected from the church interior into the churchyard, as a true funerary site over a new family vault, physically and visually connected to the church interior. Upjohn suggested building this chapel about midway along the church’s north wall, an intriguing choice. It dismissed the elite site near the altar, the zone of grace. Upjohn’s idea instead provided the Memorial maximum visibility throughout “our” zone of the church, that for the worshipping faithful striving for God in this life. More on that in Part II.

Completed in 1853, with a freestanding over-life-size marble group by Carl Johann Steinhäuser, a German sculptor in Rome chosen in a competition by Mrs. Burd, the complex was unique in Philadelphia of that time, and widely noticed.

Visible through a grill gate, the spare, small space showcased a freestanding white marble group that represents the resurrection of three young people seated, intertwined, in slumber. They are about to be awakened with the gentle touch of the Angel of the Resurrection for ascent to heaven, an inventive departure from the usual skyward flight or awakening to the Last Trump. Washed in daylight by an overhead skylight and offset by rich burgundy walls, the marble, with the intertwined children, the angel’s outstretched wings, and the soaring crucifix (the crucified Christ appears in various symbols), registered dramatically over great distance. The sculpture arrested the viewer visually to proclaim the bonds between humankind and the divine, and the message of promised Resurrection, the goal of the Christian.

The chapel, framed by the church’s gallery and close to seated worshippers, was simultaneously otherworldly and natural. We could identify and believe.

Spanning the churchyard and church, the memorial chapel to one family symbolically embraced all in both spaces. The departed faithful were thus connected to the living within the church more closely than in the original adjacent churchyard. We’ll deal with the implications of that linkage in Part II.

Beginning in 1878, when Furness’ new transept and vestry room overtook the entire churchyard, the Burd Memorial palpably represented the lost community under the floors. A door cut in the chapel’s east wall, however, permitted worshippers in the transept to see the sculpture within its chapel. The Memorial’s authority, as the church’s messenger and site of communal bond across time to resurrection, thus grew.

The present three-story Parish House of 1888 designed by George Mason, that replaced Furness’ one-story vestry room, radically changed the experience of the Memorial. Mason’s addition enveloped the chapel, blocking the ceiling skylight that provided the “miraculous” light. A new door connecting the Parish House to the chapel added another sight line and passage into (and through) the chapel.

In addition to another vantage point onto the dramatic sculpture (subsequently electrically spotlit), you could now enter and move around the chapel itself in private worship or prayer. Though not designed for entry, this small space provided a welcoming quiet and intimacy around the marble group, which became movingly gentle up close, inviting contemplation and prayer.

Thus altered, the Burd Children’s Memorial chapel added another dimension of embrace, of call to private spirituality, to a church that already inspired such experience in addition to its formal group worship.

The Memorial’s evolving role, I now realize, grew even greater in the present day. After major pivots for changing times through the early 21th century, St. Stephen’s suspended religious activity in 2016 but reopened the following year. To move forward, the church looked backward through its life since 1823. A new wood and tile floor in the transept incorporated part of the lost original churchyard within an evocation of the 1878 transept pews removed in 1989. 

Bringing the original churchyard vaults into Furness’ transept reaffirmed St. Stephen’s original celebration of community through time. In what we call the Furness Burial Cloister, we can now join the departed faithful within the church.

Surging between the burials integrated into the church and Parish House, the Burd Children’s Memorial proclaims St. Stephen’s celebration of connections—human and divine—on the path to resurrection. Today, the Memorial presides eloquently over the community of Now within the Cloister, amidst the community of our past.

Yet the Burd Children’s Memorial has so much more to say within the entire church. Stay tuned for those thoughts. And come see, if you can, at our Open House on July 4 and beyond.

— Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator