by Bruce Cooper Gill
A visitor to Christ Church between 1695 and 1776, depending on the
year of the visit, would have immediately encountered one or more of
four Royal objects: a gilded crown on the steeple, the elaborately
carved wooden crest of King William III, the carved wooden cartouche of
King George II surmounted by a crown on the east façade of the
building, or the polychrome decorated carved wooden arms of King George
III.
From its founding in 1695 until the Revolution, Christ Church was in
contrast to its Quaker environment and exhibited a Royalist influence
in the Philadelphia. The caveat by which the church was founded was
included-at the insistence of Henry Compton, then Bishop of London, in
Charles II’s land grant to William Penn in 1680, that if twenty persons
desired a “preacher,” one would be sent to them for their instruction.1
A letter by thirty-six petitioners to Francis Nicholson, governor of
Maryland and Virginia, respectively, sought Nicholson’s aid in
obtaining a new minister for the church, citing “wicked and damnable
principles and doctrines” among Quakers in Philadelphia, which made the
petitioners “uneasy and inquisitive after the truth and sound doctrines
of the Church of England.”2 William Penn considered founders of the church the “Hot Church Party;”3 William III’s crest marked a pew reserved for use by Royal Governors of the colonies.
Although attempts to create and maintain an “established” church in
the colonies were eventually subordinated by the growing denominational
nature of religious life in America and by lay domination (vestries) of
church affairs in the colonies, the Royal Church of England appeared in
Philadelphia, as inferred from a 1741 letter to the Bishop of London
regarding the Reverend Richard Peters (then being requested as the new
Rector of Christ Church), that “His [Peters'] attachment to the
Constitution of our Established Church is Confessedly sincere.”4
It was not by accident at Christ Church that the massive Georgian
edifice with its two-hundred-foot tall “Philadelphia Steeple” was
constructed, nor that the interior appointments of the building were
the finest available for serving the populous and pleasing the tastes
of visiting royal officials. The interior of the church was modified in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, reflecting changes in
decorative taste and liturgical needs. It is the objects which remain
and the references to the furnishing of the church found in cash
journals and vestry minutes which bear testimony to those early years
and the post-Revolution political changes.
London responded to the early needs of its fledgling establishment
in Philadelphia by sending missionaries or “commissaries” to the New
World, appointed by the Bishop of London and serving under the
auspices, after 1701, of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
London also sent, in 1697, a massive, octagonal, walnut baptismal font
from All Hallows Church, Barking-by-the-Tower, London, where it was no
longer needed. The font is supposed to be, ironically, that in which
Pennsylvania founder William Penn himself was baptized in 1644 (Penn
did not commit to Quakerism until the age of twenty-three, in 1667).
Queen
Anne presented a three-piece silver communion set (chalice, flagon, and
footed paten) to the church in 1708. Requests for silver are found as
early as the letter to Governor Nicholson, that he “mind his Grace [the
Archbishop of Canterbury], of Plate for the Communion Table and a
Library.”5 Evan Evans, minister to the church, noted in a
report to London in 1705, that “we are [now] very well furnished with
books against Quakerism but . . . The furniture for the Communion Table
is not yet provided, & we have no plate for the Communion but a
smal [sic] one bestowed by one of our pious founders . . . “6 
The
chalice and flagon of Queen Anne's presentation set are inscribed “Anne
Reginae/in Usum Ecclesiae/Anglicanaeapud/ Philadelphiam/A.D./1708”
(from Her Majesty Queen Anne to her Anglican Church in Philadelphia).
Seven
years after the arrival of Queen Anne’s gift, a matching flagon was
made by Philadelphia silversmith Philip Syng, Sr., in memory of Col.
Robert Quary and paid for out of a £60 bequest of Quary’s estate. Quary
was a public official, an ardent churchman, and the political and
religious nemesis of William Penn as a leader of the “Hot Church
Party.” Syng also created a large silver bowl from the bequest to fit
into the marble basin of the English “Penn font.” The communion silver
is still used on feast days, and the silver baptismal bowl is regularly
used to welcome newcomers into Christ’s family through Baptism.
The interior of the church building in the second half of the
eighteenth century was far more lavish than it appears today. Painted
decoration was used above the Palladian, or Venetian, window and on the
ceiling of the chancel. The reproductions of the 1787 copperplate
engraving attributed to James Peller Malcolm and the later Mason
watercolor found in Charles E. Peterson’s accompanying article “The
Building of Christ Church” show the decorative character of the
eighteenth-century interior of the building, as does a single
polychrome rosette seen in a metope of the south chancel frieze staring
today with color-filled fluid design into the otherwise quiet and
reserved monochromatic chancel space.7 Drapery and
upholstery were also found throughout the building. The forms of the
early communion table and pulpit are unknown (replaced in 1769 and
1788, respectively), except for a 1731 reference to “turning a new ball
[probably a foot] for the communion table”8 and innumerable
references to hangings and cloths. New hangings were made for the table
and new pulpit in 1771, of crimson velvet, gold fringes, and tassels,
at a cost of more than £80.9 The organ gallery at the west
end of the church, including an upper gallery or loft on either side of
the 1766 organ case, was hung with crimson velvet drapery and tassels,10 and curtains were hung from gallery windows.11
At least some of the pews, presumably including the governor’s pew in
the south gallery, marked by William III’s crest, were also richly
upholstered with cushions, silk lace, crimson velvet, carpets, silver
fringe, brass tacks and hooks, green binding, and tassels.12
Handsome brass lighting devices were included in the furnishing of
the church building as well. A report was given to the vestry in 1744
that a “Captain Seymour had brought a Beautiful Chandelier of 24
Branches from London.”13 A committee was appointed to
examine it, and the set of “branches,” as the chandelier was called,
was purchased for the newly completed church for £56.14 The
English chandelier today hangs from the church ceiling by a chain of
small round links, but in 1744 the branches would have been suspended
by a chain of thin iron bars with hooks crafted on their ends. Candles
and oil lamps were used to light the church, as evidenced by references
found in the cash journals such as “To Oyle and candles.”15
None of the lamps survives, but three magnificent brass wall sconces
do. The large baroque, early- to mid-eighteenth-century sconces are
probably Dutch in origin. Each octagonal sconce is surmounted by a
large plume-like reflector and is decorated with elongated and circular
lobes, gadrooning, and chased vines. Only one reference to sconces is
found in the cash journals, a payment of six shillings to “Mrs Crapp
for 2 Brass Sconces.”16 It is unknown whether the surviving
three include these two, particularly as church tradition holds that
the three are of but of a full dozen used to light the building.
The metal wares were well cared for in the eighteenth century. The
“branch” or chandelier was taken down and cleaned annually, and the
silver was cleaned by silversmiths on a regular basis in the spring and
late fall (perhaps in anticipation of the feast days of Christmas and
Easter). Sconces were stored in felt or cloth bags, and felt-lined
boxes were used to store and transport silver. On Christmas Day, 1771,
the vestry purchased 1½ yards of scarlet cloth to line a new box,17 no doubt the “mahogany box for Christ Church Plate,” for which they paid Philadelphia joiner John Elton £3.10.0 in March, 1772.18
A new pulpit was commissioned for the church in 1769 out of funds
remaining from the £100 bequest of spinster Mary Andrews to buy bread
for the poor at Christmas, erect a new Pulpit, and create a monument to
her munificence.19 The pulpit is an important object to
survive at Christ Church, not only because of its design and maker, but
in the sense that, at the time of its installation, the pulpit was the
focal object within the church and presented a dramatic shift in
liturgical perspective of the mid-eighteenth century resulting from the
evangelism of the Great Awakening after 1740. The pulpit formerly stood
on the north side of the center aisle or nave, and the communion table
occupied the position of importance in the chancel. The new, white,
wineglass-shaped pulpit with its grand curving staircase, gilded
decoration, and decorated canopy supported by a large square Ionic
column and topped with a carved gilded dove-the whole dripping with
nearly £80 worth of upholstery and tassels-suddenly stood in the
chancel directly in front of the large Venetian window. The dramatic
effect of the new focal point in the center of the chancel was enhanced
by the shading of chancel paint colors to draw one’s eye to the center
of the space.20
The communion table was brought out
in front of the pulpit as needed and was stored behind it when not in
use. The pulpit was designed and constructed for £70 by Philadelphia
cabinetmaker John Folwell,21 who also designed the “Rising
Sun” Speaker’s chair at Independence Hall and is sometimes called the
“Chippendale of America.” His design for the pulpit was taken directly
from Batty Langley’s City and Country Builder’s and Workman’s
Treasury of Designs, published in London in 1740. Folwell employed
elements from nearly every one of Langley’s six pulpit designs.22
The 1787 Malcolm engraving of the church’s interior, referenced above
and believed to be the earliest known view of the interior, shows the
pulpit standing majestically in the center of the chancel. It could
also easily have been Folwell, again working from Langley’s designs,
who created the remarkable carved and marbleized wood memorial to Mary
Andrews, which still hangs on the south wall in the church. Seventeen
sixty-nine is an early date for such American memorial art, a trend
that would not get well under way until the nineteenth century.
It was the well-known Philadelphia cabinetmaker Johnathan Gostelowe
who finally resolved the problem in 1788 of moving the communion table
back and forth around the pulpit, by creating a mahogany communion
table which fitted tightly against the front of the pulpit by means of
a recess in the back rail and top of the table. The table is quite
plain, except for the fluted Marlborough legs and carved leaf-bud
design along the lower edge of the skirt, as it was intended to be
dressed with hangings. Gostelowe also produced and gave to the church a
new mahogany baptismal font in 1789. The font is comprised of a curved
upper section and base, connected by a fluted columnar shaft. It is
carved with leaves, buds, and flowers; a flame finial serves as a
handle for the lid. A vestry resolution thanking Gostelowe for his
gifts is recorded in 1789.23 Gostelowe and other
Philadelphia craftsmen who worked for the church certainly realized
that their gifts were good for both the church’s business and their
own. The church’s principal eighteenth-century income was from pew
rents and funeral/burial fees, and with a convenient communion table
more pews could be fitted in the chancel.24 Gostelowe was
associated with the church as a vestryman, and it was important for him
to have examples of his work before wealthy and influential
contemporaries.
The Revolution and its ultimate conclusion brought upheaval and
impoverishment to Church life in America. The Anglican Church was
particularly afflicted. Establishment of an institutional organization
and fashioning of ecclesiastical structures were necessary. The
one-time links with the Church of England were gone, and denominational
defection had eroded the Church’s population base. The King could no
longer be the head of the Church in America (prayers for Royalty had
been struck from the prayer book); the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel no longer sent appointed commissaries to the New World.
Through the conciliatory efforts of Christ Church Rector William White,
the Anglican Church in America was reorganized at Christ Church as the
Protestant Episcopal Church in America. White traveled to London and
was consecrated Bishop in 1787.
The physical characteristics of Christ Church changed little
immediately after the Revolution. The furnishings and decoration
remained, even including several Royal objects. William III’s crest,
with its small crowns and “WR” broken off, continued to mark a reserved
pew-the President’s pew used by George Washington on the ground floor;
George II and his crown remained on the façade until 1795,25
at which time they were taken down and later given to the Library
Company (only to be returned to the church in 1872, and the bust
remounted with crown in 1894).26 George III did not fair as
well; tradition tells us that his coat-of-arms was pulled down and
smashed in Second Street during the Revolution, but a small piece was
spirited away and saved as a relic later to return to the historic
parish.
The gilded crown on the steeple is reported to have been prophetically destroyed by lightning in 1776.27 It was replaced with the gilded weather vane and bishop’s mitre seen today shortly after 1787.
Of the objects associated with Christ Church after the Revolution,
three chairs are significant. Bishop White used a tall-backed,
Philadelphia, bamboo-turned Windsor chair in the church as a “cathedra”
or bishop’s chair. There had been no Anglican bishops in America during
the colonial period, and Bishop White’s American Windsor cathedra
signified that, although in the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal
Church in America was separate from the Church of England and was
controlled by its own ecclesiastical government.
The Windsor chair was replaced shortly after the turn of the
nineteenth century by a large upholstered mahogany cathedra with reeded
legs in the Sheraton tradition. The chair is attributed to Philadelphia
cabinetmaker Ephraim Haines, c. 1807, because of the feet (a bulbous
turning above a turned tapered foot28) and similarities in
carving of vine motifs and acanthus leaves on the leg capitals to the
set of furniture Haines produced for Philadelphia merchant Stephen
Girard. The cresting rail of the cathedra is carved with grapevines and
bunches of grapes and is surmounted by a carved bishop’s mitre. The
hand rests on the arms are carved cherubs’ faces. The arm supports and
front leg capitals are carved with acanthus leaves. The exact date of
the chair is not known. Haines gave up cabinet making and went into the
wholesale lumber trade shortly after the 1807 Girard commission;
however, the cathedra was certainly in use by 1814, as Bishop White
appears seated in it in a Thomas Sully portrait signed and dated on the
cuff of White’s vestments.
The third chair is another Windsor, c. 1820. The tall-backed, green
painted and stenciled chair, with its unusual back of three rails and
spindles, was used by Bishop White when presiding at meetings of the
Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, and it represents the new
directions taken by the Church in America after the Revolution. Whereas
during the colonial period, Christ Church was itself essentially a
mission in the New World being served at the pleasure of the Bishop of
London, after the Revolution Christ Church, in new climates of
political and ecclesiastical government, had to respond to the needs of
American society.
Bishop White died in 1836, and it is perhaps significant that his
death coincided with the first major interior alterations at Christ
Church under the direction of architect Thomas U. Walter. Great changes
would take place in the nineteenth century in the decoration and
placement of objects within the eighteenth-century building. By 1854,
the great canopy or sounding board over the grand pulpit would be
removed and the pulpit’s body painted to imitate walnut. Gaslight would
replace candles and sconces (except for ceremonial purposes).
Stained-glass windows would find their way into the building, hiding
the church interior from the community which built it and reflecting an
inward-looking attitude of the late nineteenth-century Episcopal
Church. The second half of the nineteenth century would exhibit an
antiquarian interest in the church, responsible for the preservation of
many objects and miscellaneous memorabilia; the “old trimmings”
remaining from repairs to the church were given to the Ladies
Missionary Society of the parish in 1854,29 and a “Committee on the Library and Relics” was established by the vestry in 1861.30 The crown was gone, but Christ Church remained to find its own way in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America.
NOTES
1. Perry, William Stevens, Papers Relating to the History of the Church in America, 1680–1778. (Private: 1871), p. 5.
2. Ibid.
3. Watson, John Fanning, Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in the Olden Time. (Hazzard edition, Philadelphia, 1884), pp. 78, 85, 380.
4. Perry, op. cit., p. 225.
5. Ibid, p. 5.
6. Report of Evan Evans, minister, to ?, 3 November 1705, Lambeth Palace Library, London, S.P.G. Papers, vol. XV (1702–1707).
7. Subsequent to the original publication of this and the
accompanying article by Charles E. Peterson in 1981, a paint analysis
of the interior of Christ Church was performed by the Frank S. Welsh
Company of Bryn Mawr, Pa., to determine the character and survival of
finishes. His report, “Christ Church, c. 1744, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania; Preliminary Finishes Investigation,” February 1988, is on
file at Christ Church. During the investigation, the circular design of
underlying decoration was determined to be reflected through later
layers of paint (visible with raking light) in the metopes (or square
blocks) of the chancel frieze. One of these on the south wall was
cleaned and exposed, revealing the original polychrome rosette and a
subsequent repaint. The rosette was left intact and is visible in the
chancel today.
8. Christ Church manuscript cash journal (hereinafter “MS Journal”), April 1731.
9. Ibid, January 1, 1772.
10. Various references in MS Journal, Christ Church manuscript
vestry minutes (hereinafter “MS VM”), and Christ Church receipted
bills, including MS VM December 7, 1789, and c. 1818 watercolor of
Christ Church interior by William Mason.
11. MS Journal, op. cit., July 7, 1744.
12. Various references in MS Journal, MS VM, and Receipted Bills,
including Receipted Bills from Thomas Lawrence, December 26, 1771, and
William Bankson, November 10, 1790.
13. MS VM, op. cit., November 6, 1744.
14. Ibid, February 2, 1744/45.
15. Ibid, May 12, 1766.
16. MS Journal, op. cit., 1713.
17. Ibid, December 25, 1771.
18. Ibid, March 4, 1772.
19. MS VM, op. cit., August 14, 1769.
20. See Welsh, op.cit, note 7.
21. Ibid, December 6, 1769.
22. Langley, Batty, The City and Country Builder’s and Workman’s Treasury of Designs. (London: 1750), Plates CXII-CXVII.
23. MS VM, op. cit., January 22, 1789.
24. Manuscript pew plans of the ground floor pasted inside bound pew
rent books (reproduced in Peterson, op. cit., Illus. nos. 5 & 11)
shows two pews flanking the pulpit in the chancel (c. 1785-1800) in the
earlier plan and six pews in the later plan (1790s–1824).
25. Westcott, Thomson, The Historic Mansions and Buildings of Philadelphia, (Philadelphia, 1895), p. 83.
26. Minutes of the Library Company of Philadelphia, November 7, 1872
(VIII, p. 410), cited in a letter from Edwin Wolf 2nd to the writer,
dated July 25, 1980.
27. Church tradition maintains that the crown was destroyed in 1776;
however, that drama is not recorded in surviving church record. The
steeple was indeed struck by lightning the following year (MS VM, June
9, 1777) rendering the “Electric Rod and Conductor useless.” It is
possible that the crown was damaged and pulled down at that time.
28. See Carson, Marian S., “Henry Connelly and Ephraim Haines,” The Philadelphia Museum Bulletin. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Spring, 1953), XLVIII: p. 237.
29. MS VM, op. cit., December 6, 1854.
30. Ibid, October 31, 1861, cited in “Record Book of the Committee on ‘Library and Relics’ of Christ Church Philadelphia.”