The Church Series: Old Saint Paul's, Baltimore (to 1854)

View of Baltimore from Chapel Hill by Francis Guy, 1803.
Brooklyn Museum of Art/Wikimedia Commons

Few big-city churches in the United States have the length of history of Old Saint Paul's. Founded in 1692, it was one of the original 30 parishes created by the Establishment Act when Maryland was transferred from a proprietary province to a Royal colony. Designated as "Patapsco Parish" for its proximity to the river of the same name, the church moved from Colgate Creek (near the present-day Seagirt Marine Terminal in Dundalk) to its present location in 1729, when Baltimore town was first laid out. The remaining property, "Lot 19" on the original survey, is the last parcel from this original survey never to have been sold.

The present building is the fourth on the site. The first small brick church built shortly after the purchase of the land was replaced in 1784 by a larger, two story church similar to other colonial and early Federal period churches like Christ Church, Alexandria. This building can be seen at the center of Francis Guy's depiction of Baltimore above.

By 1814, the church was outgrowing its colonial building, and its unstable location along the Jones Falls near present-day Lexington and St. Paul Street meant that a new structure would be erected on another part of the property. St. Paul's commissioned Robert Cary Long, Sr., Baltimore's first native-born professional architect, to design a large, Neoclassical building with seating for over 1500 congregants. It was of his most prominent works, along with Davidge Hall, the home of the University of Maryland School of Medicine that still stands a few blocks away. Long's St. Paul's was ambitious in design. The tower reached 126 feet and was visible from all over the city. This imposing tower sat above a large rectangular pediment, with Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian capitals in ascending order as the tower reached the cross on the top. Friezes of Moses and the Last Supper flanked either side of the pediment. The portico covered a triple entrance, and the bring front was trimmed with marble. The interior was equally grand, with full galleries on the west and sides, and an even higher second gallery in the rear. Gilded Corinthian columns and a long center aisle led to a marble altar in the circular apse on the east end.

On April 18, 1854, the church sexton left a fire going on the east end of the church for a planned choir rehearsal. The rehearsal was cancelled, the fire spread to the roof, and St. Paul's was reduced to a ruin overnight. Heroic (some might say foolhardy) efforts were made to save the church baptismal font by Maximillian Godefroy, as well as the Bishop's throne, which today are kept on the east end of the church. Some parts of the church were salvaged: the dome and cross from the top of the tower was placed at the Church Home & Hospital on Broadway, where Edgar Allen Poe had died five years earlier. The bas-reliefs of Moses and the Last Supper were placed on the new church, and most importantly, the walls that remained standing were used to rebuild the structure.

   

St. Luke's Church,
Philadelphia

There are no surviving images of the interior of Long's St. Paul's. Along with Davidge Hall, Godefroy's Unitarian Church, Latrobe's Roman Catholic Cathedral, and the First Baptist Church, St. Paul's formed a core of Neoclassical structures at the heart of the city. (All but First Baptist are still standing; the now-Basilica of the Assumpion has been restored to its original appearance.) At the same time, Greek Revival was a secular style of the new Federal republic, whose last examples in the Episcopal Church were erected no later than 1850. Few prominent examples survive today along the east coast. The interior most likely was similar to St. Luke's Church in Philadelphia and St. Paul's in Richmond, both of which were designed by Thomas  Somerville Stewart about 20 years after Baltimore's St. Paul's. When the time came to rebuild, changes in both taste and in the Anglican-Episcopal church meant that the Vestry would look to a very different time for a model.

   

The remnants of Long's St. Paul's, and Federal Period Baltimore

The Church Home and Hospital, where Edgar Allen Poe
died in 1849. After the fire of 1854, the dome and cross
were placed on the building, which remained a hospital until 
the early 21st century.

Bas-relief of Moses by Antonio Capellano, 
salvaged from the ruins of the 1814 building.

First Unitarian Church (1818).
Along with St. Paul's and the Basilica, this formed a line
of Neoclassical churches along Charles Street.

Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1821).
Designed by Benjamin Latrobe, the Second Architect of the United States Capitol,
as the first Roman Catholic Cathedral in the United States, it has been
restored to its original appearance.