Friday Feature- A clearer history of Furness’s 1878 remodeling emerges from our archives

I’m constantly amazed at how new questions and information make us see the familiar differently.

Furness’s remodeled St. Stephen’s

So it was, after recently corresponding with architectural historian Michael J. Lewis about Furness and St. Stephen’s. Returning with new questions to vestry minutes I’d examined years ago (to learn why they covered the churchyard), I found information about this architect and church that reconfigured and expanded what we knew. 

Here, then, with thanks to Mike, is a preliminary, informal story of the undertaking drawn from the vestry minutes and reviews. I’ll speculate and raise glaring questions, preceding many more. They alone make this post longer than I’d hoped. . .  

The project was a “repainting” job that snowballed into a major remodeling job-- without a competition.

Why? St. Stephen’s, as we learned earlier, had just decided to stay put rather than to build bigger elsewhere, despite spatial pressures. By 1876, the church was so crowded during services, thanks to rector William Rudder’s famous sermons, the vestry placed stools in the aisles for the overflow.

Their first approach, however, was not spatial. According to the vestry minutes, on May 6, 1878 the Committee for Repairs sought and received vestry approval to “obtain an estimate for the painting of the church” to be presented at the next meeting.

Frank Furness

The committee’s response officially introduced Frank Furness to St. Stephen’s. On June 3 it presented a plan “proposed by Mr. Furness for the repainting of the interior” for about “fourteen hundred dollars.” The vestry authorized the committee to proceed with Furness’s specifications at a cost not to exceed $1400. Furness is mentioned by last name only; was he already known? What were his specifications? 

Furness circulated offstage, communicating with the committee and likely examining the site (or delegating an assistant to do so).  

Plans nonetheless quickly mushroomed to also expand the space. On June 17, the vestry approved a contract with Furness for “an addition to the northern side of the Church, east of the Burd Monument [a funerary “side chapel” projecting into the churchyard], according to the plans and specifications as now proposed and shown by Mr. Furness, and [directed] the Secretary . . . to affix the seal on the contract.” 

A month later, a review of the work in progress in The Churchman (July 20, 1878) reveals how extensive the project had become, with even more changes—never mentioning Furness. The account reports St. Stephen’s was “undergoing a complete renovation and some improvements.” The interior walls were being prepared to be “handsomely frescoed.” A galleried transept, reached by stairs through a new vestibule, was being added on the northeast wall to increase seating--with a light and airy vestry room west of the Burd Monument. The transept was to be 30 feet high, with a “peaked” roof, and rough-cast like the sides of the church. 

The church re-opened in October, according to its enthusiastic description in The Churchman (October 19) used for my imaginary tour of the changed space (click here). 

Yet.... 

Where are the reported expanded specifications, contract, and possible drawings?  

The “large” vestry room is a mystery. What were its dimensions and appearance? Did any of the “front” churchyard remain? 

Detail, façade of the Furness annex. Cover, The Parish News, December 1900

There’s no mention of even a projected rose window for the transept; the current 1914 Tiffany window is, according to the Vestry Minutes, the second there.

A photograph of the church façade, taken soon after George C. Mason’s subsequent Parish House was completed in 1888, shows a tall arched recess for a rose window between two lancet windows over a simple double door as on the current wall. Was it part of the original design or a change, and dating when? Back to the archives. 

Where’s a sacristy to replace Strickland’s that extended from the northeast corner of the church? Demolished for the transept, its foundations appear in an 1878-9 transept sub-floor plan. 

The list of contractors in the minutes’ final accounting of the project (November 4, 1878) opens new doors.

To cite only some: The builder, R. [Robert?] Tout (about $1200 for contracted work and contingencies, listed on a prior page]; the painter, “Blumen & Co.” (about $2100 including extras); Sharpless & Watts, chancel tiles ($591.70); S.G. “Carsswell,” brass pulpit and rail ($700); and last, Frank Furness Architect ($936.90). The total: $14,228.33.

Because so much of their contribution has disappeared, we honor these makers who were integral to the project and hope to learn more about them as protagonists in Philadelphia’s burgeoning life.

I found the tile purveyor easily online: Sharpless & Watts was a prominent Philadelphia tilemaker and importer located nearby (1385 Market Street) whose contributions to City Hall and the Masonic Temple (also nearby) during these years fill the internet today. Had they worked with Furness before? 

How does Furness’s fee here measure against his others? 

The Vestry Minutes also reveal St. Stephen’s administrative process. The Committee for Repairs here typifies the standing committees appointed annually by the Rector in the range of its authority and activity. The precious details reside within committee communications. For future research (and feedback from readers who know them), the 1878 repairs committee was comprised of William Lippincott, L. Ramsay Krumbhaar (a “merchant”), and Charles Muirhead (a prominent real estate conveyancer). 

Yet the formal vestry meetings and their minutes (especially these minimalist ones) are only the tip of the iceberg, prompting more questions. 

For instance: why Furness? Unlike Richard Upjohn and Frank Wills who’d worked on the immediately prior major projects at St. Stephen’s (1849-1852), Furness was not a recognized church architect; his former partner and assistants usually took the religious commissions. Possibly other patronage networks were at work. Various congregants at St. Stephen’s, including the vestry, were prominent in the commercial or industrial worlds that regularly hired Furness’s offices. The Pennsylvania Railroad, a frequent client, offers possibilities. Congregant Thomas A. Scott, then its president, employed Furness privately; work on his Rittenhouse Square townhouse dates just before this project. James Magee, “father” of the Railroad, was a longtime vestryman, his memorial window (1879-80) and bust placed in the transept. 

I wonder about Furness’s unsung office assistants for the project.

How did Dr. Rudder, a man of formidable learning and firm convictions, fit in? Did he help devise Furness’s stenciled symbolic program, an approach that until then appeared only in St. Stephen’s stained-glass windows? How did the new scheme speak for (and to) the St. Stephen’s of 1878, a High-Church parish amid doctrinal turmoil until it turned liberal after Dr. Rudder died in 1880? 

Avanti! We now have more than we did before. 

Suzanne Glover Lindsay

St. Stephen’s historian and curator