That’s at St. Stephen’s???!!!

The chancel is the key feature of the church interior. Visually and symbolically, it’s the climax of the entire space, the area around the altar where worshippers and clergy interact with the divine through the Eucharist, the Gospel, and Scriptural readings. As the focal element facing the entrance to the west, St. Stephen’s chancel on the east wall commands the attention of anyone who looks in or enters, setting the overall stage within.  

We’re lucky to have materials that record the dramatic changes to the chancel from 1823 to 1917. We rarely know why they were made. Published in early articles and church pamphlets that typically circulated only within the congregation, most states are long forgotten, so these posts aim to introduce them to a new community. Most of the chancel designs have already appeared singly on this website and Facebook page. But their presentation together in this one, I find, is dramatic. And very informative. Some new questions and possibilities about survivals occurred to me as I studied them together.

FIG. 2: Detail, AZ Shindler, Interior of St. Stephen’s, by 1858

 FIRST AND SECOND STATES

Exhibited in 1858, this painting by A.Z. Shindler provides the earliest view of the church interior that we currently have. The detail I show here records the second known state of the chancel in 1852. It was designed by New York Ecclesiologist [midcentury Gothic Revival activist] architect Richard Upjohn, who earlier planned the Burd Memorial Chapel on the north wall [not shown here]. Upjohn added the stained-glass chancel windows, slender Gothic Revival wood reredos [altar screen], pulpit, and lectern, and stone [probably marble] altar.  The ornamental windows were probably English, though we don’t yet known by whom. Upjohn also raised the chancel floor, separating it from the nave to emphasize it as a sacred zone.

This painting also helps us to imagine the original state of the chancel (1823-1852) that, right now, we only know from published descriptions. An article in The Casket of September 1828 tells us that the towering east windows were covered with purple curtains to control the morning glare, suggesting the glass was clear, perhaps awaiting funds to order the intended stained-glass examples. The article further describes a pulpit and reading desk draped in purple velvet but makes no mention of an altar or table. Another pending commission whose temporary stand-in, unlike others, was deemed not worth mention?

 THIRD STATE

The third state, due to Frank Furness in 1878, is the most elusive. As of today, all I know about it within his complete redesign of St. Stephen’s that year, comes from a description in The Churchman (19 October 1878) that Mike Krasulski included early on in his archival treasure, “History of Episcopal Churches in Philadelphia.” Do you get tired of being thanked, Mike? For all its frustrating gaps—among other quirks, the designer and artisans are never identified—the account is very revealing. Furness replaced everything. The floor was paved with encaustic tiles bearing, like all else, elaborate patterns and, fittingly, symbols of the Crucifixion around the altar. The dominant ornamental material was delicately wrought brass: a new railing; an openwork brass pulpit that replaced Upjohn’s “old oaken” version; an English brass lectern and brass standard lights flanking the altar, which, annoyingly, are not described. So, for a sense of possibilities, I look at the brasswork of Furness and Hewitt’s Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts completed two years before (1876). 

Fig. 3; George C. Mason reredos, 1890

 FOURTH STATE 

The Magee family’s commission in 1887 of a monumental mosaic mural of the Last Supper from Henry Holiday formed part of another change to the chancel. Installed in 1889, the mosaic was framed by this new Gothic Revival reredos designed in 1890 by local architect George C. Mason, who had just finished St. Stephen’s present Gothic Revival Parish House (1888). A very different Gothic Revival design, apparently in stone! Upjohn’s 1852 chancel windows still soar above the altar. Could that geometric openwork pulpit be Furness’? If so, Mason’s design was an eclectic (and possibly economical) combination of earlier elements. Barely visible on the altar, moreover, is a silver-gilt crucifix that we still have. According to the inscription, it’s a memorial to rector Rev. William Rudder who died in 1880. So that’s a legacy from earlier schemes that survived yet again with the next redecoration that removed the rest.

 FIFTH AND CURRENT STATE 

Fig. 4; General view of the Tiffany chancel 2018

We don’t yet know what triggered the subsequent radical redecoration in 1917-8 of the church by Louis Comfort Tiffany, with this new chancel as its centerpiece. After lengthy debate only six years before (1909), the church administration restored Furness’ compelling polychromatic program throughout the interior. The standard answer given for such redecoration during this period is that tastes changed, rejecting “High Victorian” style—but after an expensive restoration only six years before? And why this particular concept? Tiffany replaced Furness and Mason elements in stages over the year, covered walls and detailing with canvas (which droops on one ceiling rib to reveal Furness’ stenciling there), and added the present delicate Hispano-Moresque light-diffusing Champville marble reredos, whose simple lower story showcases the intensely chromatic and gleaming Holiday mosaic. The Rudder memorial crucifix reappears on the new altar. The new windows have two parts: arched clear-glass outer sections around new Tiffany stained-glass lights that illustrate the life of St. Stephen, the church’s namesake (you need binoculars or a powerful zoom to study them!). Originally, daylight formed a halo around the Tiffany lights that were then artificially backlit at night. Alas, after a fire, Wetherill P. Trout’s replacement Community House of 1925, that included a party wall against the church’s east wall, cut off the intended natural light to illuminate the ensemble during the day.

Fig. 5: Intermediate state of the Tiffany redecoration 1917/8

We’re especially fortunate to have a view of the transitional stage of the Tiffany redecoration with the Furness wall and ceiling elements, soon to disappear; new Tiffany elements; and daylight streaming through the clear glass—the only record we have of its effect, regrettably in black and white.

Through the many changes to the interior since, the Tiffany chancel still presides, now over a century old. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if significant elements removed at each prior stage went to another local church, as often happens? I dream of at least one that survives, its story unknown and waiting to be told.  

—Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian