[MassHistPres] Earliest Colonial Revival churches?

[Ttorwig]

Colleagues:

I received an inquiry from a Ph.D. student at the University of Delaware, Josh Probert. Josh asks, What are the earliest Colonial Revival churches? Josh is examining the ecclesiastical commissions of Tiffany & Co. I remember a similar discussion on this listserve some time back, but not that we came to any conclusions. Any ideas to pass on to Josh?


"I am a PhD candidate at the University of Delaware in the program in material culture studies that is in cooperation with Winterthur. My dissertation is on ecclesiastical aesthetics during the Gilded Age using Tiffany Studios as a focal point. 

"I am wondering about the Colonial Revival during this time in terms of religious architecture. Certain buildings are saved like St. Michael's in Charleston, etc.; but do you have a sense of when Colonial Revival churches first emerged? The twentieth century is saturated with these red brick churches, but I don't know if anybody has written about when they first emerged. Was it the same time as domestic houses? 

"Tiffany Studios produced a ton of Colonial Revival domestic interiors and furnishings, some similar to Wallace Nutting's exact copies of antique pieces. But they didn't do anything Colonial Revival for churches. Its seems like that aesthetic didn't become popular until after the firm closed during the Great Depression. But I'm not sure."

"I am interested in buildings from 1877 to 1932--the periodization of my dissertation, which begins with the first ecclesiastical commission of Tiffany and the dedication of Trinity Church in Boston and ends with the Great Depression and the bankruptcy of Tiffany Studios."


I know of a full Colonial Revival design by Joseph Everett Chandler in 1894 for the new building of First Parish Church in Plymouth, which (for a number of reasons) the parish rejected in favor of a late Romanesque Revival design. Other observations?


Timothy Orwig
Lecturer, Northeastern University
ttorwig at aol.com

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