Anna Magee strikes again. Big time. For the last time. And today we live with the result.

Her opening salvo to St. Stephen’s, however, gave no hint of what was to come.

In December 1916 Miss Magee obtained vestry approval for “stained-glass windows” commemorating her sister Fannie who died the previous summer, to be placed over their mother’s mosaic “reredos” (The Last Supper). Then . . . she commissioned an entirely new “chancel” with those windows from Tiffany Studios in a radically new style. 

The Vestry Minutes are mute about the process.The official account by rector Dr. Carl Grammer goes like this: Completed in early 1917, the Tiffany chancel so delighted Miss Magee and “the congregants” that she asked Dr. Grammer to continue with the Tiffany Studios to redecorate the entire church, at her expense, to bring it into harmony with the new chancel (Service Leaflet for the Presentation of Alterations and Decorations...., December 5, 1918, philadelphiastudies.org.; published repeatedly afterwards). 

The vestry, claimed the Rector, gratefully approved the proposal; Tiffany Studios promptly submitted plans and went to work. Delayed by war and the influenza pandemic, they finished by December 1918.

Dr. Grammer applauded the redecorated church for bringing the physical and spiritual into harmonious unity: “St. Stephen’s is not only a temple of worship, but also a shrine of the most refined and spiritual beauty.”

Tiffany Studios, Dr. Grammer and Anna Magee changed St. Stephen’s interior profoundly. In the place of Furness’s complex stencils and color bands, and Mason’s commanding Gothic Revival reredos, were Tiffany’s light-gray walls and stone elements that offset the mosaic, windows and darkened woodwork.

We see radical difference when we compare this 1917 photographic detail of the Furness-Mason scheme with the completed project shown above.

Miss Magee, reported Dr. Grammer, also wished to have the church “properly lighted” as part of the improvements to its various buildings for its approaching Centennial in 1923. The choice was for Edison incandescent bulbs in Tiffany fixtures that, long famous for their artistry, were installed with a new approach to electric lighting in the church.

The team filled the church with light through a double row of pendants, like the one shown here, in the nave centered on each bank of pews and fixtures in all other zones, ground and gallery, as we see in the present-day panoramic view. 

The time-honored sanctuary lamps disappeared. Gone too (oh, to have heard the discussions!) was the art lighting that prompted the Misses Magee to first electrify the church in 1890. (Read our August 9 blog post here)

Aside from task lamps at the pulpit and lectern, the new light was purely ambient, embracing the entire space. 

The change contributed definingly to a new religious experience within the church that remains essentially intact today. 

The interior coalesces in relatively even light, bringing a new unity to the art, architecture and community; to the congregation and clergy in worship; and even to St. Stephen’s founding “high” and evolving “low” Episcopalian approaches.This ambient light enabled congregants to read the Book of Common Prayer and Hymnal in their pews as never before. 

The new design also changed the relationship between natural and electric light.

As ever, the church interior depended on artificial light even in daytime because of the stained-glass windows.

Note this photograph I took last August around 8 a.m. in strong sunlight. Glowing in the dark interior, the stained-glass windows proved negligible, even blinding as ambient lighting. Yet once turned on, the electric interior light did not compromise the windows’ power in daytime. 

Here, I suggest, is physical harmony between natural and electric light. With it, I propose, comes symbolic harmony. Natural light pours in as symbolic divine presence that “speaks” through the Scripture-based images, symbols and colors of the stained-glass windows. Within the church, that divine speaking light joins the electric light that we humans use, like Nicodemus’s lamp in his quest for spiritual illumination with Jesus, to bond with the divine. (See the linked post above).

The Tiffany Studio’s incandescent light, powered between 60 to 100 watts,* was subdued enough to offer a new take on John Milton’s “dim religious light,” the ideal that the codifier of high-church Episcopalianism Bishop John H. Hobart extolled in St. Stephen’s original design. Today, we work to sustain Tiffany’s rethought quality as we convert to LED.

Space, the sacred, and the human converge in harmonious unity within the electric light of this refashioned “modern” world. Join in!

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

*Thanks to sexton Eleanor Macchia