Social Justice in Stone and Wood: St. Paul’s, Carroll Street, and the Refusal to Segregate Sacred Space.
A few days ago, I had the wonderful opportunity of being given a tour of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Carroll Street in Brooklyn by its rector, Fr William Ogborn. This beautiful Gothic-revival church is a true monument to the many generations that worshiped here, it was founded in the mid-19th century as Brooklyn was expanding into a working port city in the high church tradition that was mainline in New York City, the eye is drawn towards the altar, a sign to mark the important of the sacramental life of the parish.
One of the peculiar elements of this church is its welcoming architecture, there is no space lesser than another, so that all of its historically diverse constituency could occupy an equally valuable location in the building during worship.
This democratization of churches was essential to the Anglo-Catholic movement, at a time of pew-renting that excluded the poorer and the darker. Beauty at St. Paul’s isn’t merely aesthetic but it serves the sacramental life of the church through the art, music, incense, and ceremonial so that it could belong to the whole congregation. The liturgy here has historically been elaborate and rooted in the ritualistic revival of the time.
Among the greatest Anglican architect is Ralph Adams Cram (in my personal opinion, I know my English friends will crucify me, greater than any Pugin, Bodley, Comper or Scott… this requires another article, but I find him much more refined). Cram was one of the most influential Gothic Revival architects of his time, having worked in some of New York’s finest Episcopal churches. He designed the exquisite Lady Chapel and Saint Joseph Chapel, integrating them in the previous building. These intimate but richly decorated spaces truly encourage prayer.
The Lady Chapel is especially fine with its wall paintings and intricate woodwork narrating the life of Mary in great detail. The scenes follow the Medieval narrative with great clarity while the woodwork is dense with symbolism recalling Mary such as the fleur-de-lys. The art accompanies the faithful in the journey of the incarnation through Mary’s journey of obedience, sorrow, and finally joy.
The Chapel of Saint Joseph, on the Gospel side of the apse, offers a similar scheme. While the Lady Chapel is richly decorated, Saint Joseph’s Chapel is more specific in its iconographic theme. The reredos gathers saints from the Church’s ancient tradition as well as the Anglican one, with saints such as Charles King and Martyr. The dedication is probably also a nod to the then growing Italian community in Brooklyn.
The side chapels, shrines and carved Stations of the Cross, as well as the fine high altar (not the final design, but a beautiful one nonetheless) are remindful of the Catholic tradition common to Italian immigrants of the area, but also one that was deeply familiar to the high church tradition of the West Indian parishioners.
In the side aisles hang ex voto in the shape of model ships, they are not mere decoration, but prayers made visible. Brooklyn was a port city; St. Paul’s parishioners worked at the docks and sailed those ships. They were given as a sign of thankfulness to God after a certain prayer had been answered, usually one that requested renewed health in a loved one.
Between the 1920s and the 1950s, a great number of Western Caribbean parishioners started arriving to St. Paul’s, partly because of its sacramental nature. They also found the tolerance they could not find elsewhere. In other churches, black people could only sit in the gallery, St. Paul’s reserved them the front pews, their descendants movingly still sit there to this day.
Italian devotion was also visible in the shrines to the saints, the last of which being that of Saint Anthony of Padua, given in memory of the death of a family’s seventeen-year-old child who died in a car accident. In Italy, Saint Anthony of Padua is often invoked when something is lost, not only objects but also direction in life. The family transformed their grief in public prayer. Unlike many other Episcopal churches at the time, St. Paul’s embraced its diversity, it did not shy away from it.
The building’s theology extends beyond its actual building. Besides it is Saint Andrew’s House, a rectory with its own chapel and even an outdoor Sacrament House, designed to host the sacrament in such a way so that no one could walk over it! It truly shows how seriously St. Paul’s took its catholicity.
Indeed, for a time the house hosted the brothers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, the Cowley Fathers whose disciplined prayer life and sacramental devotion inspired the church’s liturgical life, their communal worship belonged in the church itself where their stalls still survive.
Saint Andrew’s House also preserves some fine Medieval glass as well as other historic artifacts, a sign of a now gone love the American Gilded Age had for European culture and art. St. Paul’s was also the first church in North America to have a cross placed on an altar, the cross can still be seen in the church.
St. Paul’s never shied away from its mission. The church’s façade is beautified by fine red doors marking the color of Christ’s sacrificial blood, framed by beautiful stone carvings, as a sign of the symbolism that leads us to the altar and the receiving of that ever-redeeming sacrament.
From the Great War, when the then rector, Andrew Chalmers Wilson, carried Holy Communion to dying soldiers in the field to the parish’s 9/11 memorial, when the church was constantly open for prayer and requiem masses, St. Paul’s always responded to catastrophe through the sacraments, making room for people at their best and at their worst.
It is not a place of mere beauty but somewhere people can truly find comfort in God’s redeeming mission, to follow in Jesus’ true mission, by placing the last, from the gallery to the first pew. I am thankful to the rector, the Rev. William Ogborn, for having given me a generous welcome and for having allowed me to truly feel God’s presence in this Holy Space. Please, keep St. Paul’s in your prayers.
