Church of the Messiah, St. Louis Missouri

Date added: December 25, 2024

Primary (west) facade, and south (side) elevation (2012)

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The Church of the Messiah Unitarian, 5261 Enright, St. Louis, Missouri, was constructed in 1907 to designs of John Lawrence Mauran. The small Gothic Revival-style church is one of St. Louis's outstanding examples of a church design that achieves architectural excellence on a modest budget, and one that is distinctly set apart from other churches in St. Louis by an extraordinary group of stained glass memorial windows manufactured in 1879 by the London studio of designer Daniel Cottier (1838-1891), an internationally renowned artist. In 1906, these windows were removed from the Unitarians' former church building (erected 1879-80; demolished, 1987) and reinstalled as the principal architectural embellishment in Mauran's new church where the architect created an architectural setting, blending Gothic motifs and Arts & Crafts sensitivity to materials, as a foil for displaying the sumptuous color harmonies and forms exhibited in the Cottier windows. The Church of the Messiah windows are the only glass by Cottier found in the Midwest, and are a unique example in St. Louis of a historic church building with a near-complete program of glazing that was removed from an older building for reuse in a new design.

The church was organized in St. Louis in 1834 by William Greenleaf Eliot (1811-1887), a recent graduate of Harvard Theological Seminary and the son of a prominent Massachusetts family. Eliot and his congregation, composed largely of fellow New Englanders, grew to become, over several decades, leading civic and cultural influences in the life of the city, committed to advancing philanthropy, education, social reform, commerce, art, and architecture, to name a few areas of distinction and achievement. Already in 1843 when Charles Dickens visited St. Louis, the English author praised Eliot and his congregation's non-sectarian efforts, their liberal actions, and wide benevolence. In 1853, Rev. Eliot and sixteen members of his church incorporated present-day Washington University in St. Louis, the Unitarians greatest achievement in education; Rev. Eliot served as president of the board of directors (1853-1885) and as chancellor (1880-1887).

Despite the fact that Rev. Eliot, a deeply practical man, disparaged architects (calling them "arch-pests"), and railed against "showy, stylish churches," he nonetheless directed the construction of three of St. Louis's finest churches (all demolished) of their respective periods: the first, a Doric temple built in 1837 at Fourth and Pine; the second church, also located downtown, at Ninth and Olive, was one of St. Louis's earliest Gothic-style churches, and the largest Protestant church at the time it was completed in 1851. For the third and final church built under Eliot's direction, the pastor turned to a Boston architect and fellow Unitarian, Robert Swain Peabody (1845-1917), whom Eliot believed to be a "fair and just man." Harvard trained, and the son of Eliot's Unitarian colleague, Robert Peabody was the designing partner in Peabody & Stearns. Peabody's Gothic Revival design for the 1879-80 Church of the Messiah was located west of downtown at Locust and Garrison in a fashionable residential district where the Eliot family lived. The church introduced the first important outside influence on St. Louis architecture; local critics, guided by Ruskin's "Lamp of Truth," lavished praise on the architect's "honest" use of unpainted natural brick for interior walls, and the building's "honest" plan. The church project quickly led to numerous commissions to Peabody & Stearns for private mansions and commercial buildings in St. Louis, and eventually to the establishment of a St. Louis branch office of the Boston firm.

The stained glass memorial windows by Scotsman Daniel Cottier installed in the Peabody & Stearns Church of the Messiah also set a new design precedent in St. Louis, bringing the best modern English glasswork of the Aesthetic Movement to the city. Peabody would have known Cottier's work from prestigious commissions such as the four memorial windows for H. H. Richardson's Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston, installed (ca, 1877-8) shortly before construction began on the St. Louis church, or from Peabody's personal friend, the architect J. M. Brydon, who for a time was a partner in Cottier's London office. The Protestant iconography characteristic of Cottier's work in Great Britain and America dovetailed with the needs of the St. Louis Unitarian congregation, and in fact subjects found in several windows match those in Presbyterian churches in Scotland.

Born in Glasgow in 1838, Daniel Cottier was the son of a Manx (Isle of Man) seaman and a Scot mother. Cottier's early apprenticeship at age fourteen to a Glasgow glass stainer and house painter equipped him with technical knowledge in grinding and mixing paints that became the foundation for his later achievements as a consummate colorist in art glass and decorative interiors. During a few years in London (ca. 1858-62), attending night school at the Working Men's College in Red Lion Square, Cottier was exposed to a progressive circle of artists and critics including John Ruskin, Pre-Raphaelite artists William Morris and Ford Madox Brown (his drawing instructor) and others that were paving the way for new stylistic models and innovative expression in the fine and decorative arts.

In stained glass, this new, decorative, artistic approach (the Aesthetic Movement) meant a rejection of the rigid formality of composition and figure style, along with vivid primary blue and red colors, that was characteristic of windows in the dominant taste of the English Gothic Revival style. The hallmarks of Cottier's mature style (exemplified in the Church of the Messiah windows) included large, sculptural figures, frequently female with loose blond or reddish "Pre-Raphaelite" hair, garbed in classical drapery, and set against backgrounds with new motifs of lush foliage and flowers (often sunflowers or lilies). Cottier's distinctive, subdued color schemes, having "a range of performance beyond that of any modern artist" in the words of his mentor, Ford Madox Brown, employed the darker, rich tertiary colors, described by one of his contemporaries as the "new rainbow" of "mistletoe green, blue-green, duck-egg, rose-amber, and the pomegranate flower".

In 1873, four years after Cottier opened his workshop and art store in London, he established stores in Sydney, Australia, and on Fifth Avenue in New York City where scholars credit him as the pioneering "harbinger of aestheticism in America," playing a profound and influential role in disseminating progressive artistic ideas. Today Daniel Cottier is less well-known than his American contemporaries John La Farge and Louis Comfort Tiffany, though the Scotsman influenced and collaborated with those artists, and in fact, a window in the Watts Sherman mansion Newport, Rhode Island, has been reattributed from LaFarge to Cottier. In addition to windows in Trinity Church, Boston, the relatively small number of Cottier commissions in this country are concentrated in the East, notably in Memorial Hall (Harvard University); Battell Chapel (Yale University); Episcopal and Presbyterian churches in New York City and state; the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City); and in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, the Henry Clay Frick House, "Clayton."

When the Unitarians began planning for their fourth move to the building at Enright and Union they found themselves in different circumstances than had been the case with earlier relocations. Rev. Eliot's death in 1887 marked the most significant change. Although Eliot had not served as pastor for many years, he had remained the great force, a powerful internal and external symbol of identity for the congregation. Within a decade after his death, church attendance plummeted to its lowest level. Financial strain from an aging and dwindling membership, and the westward movement of the congregation to newer residential districts indicated the group no longer could be maintained in the large Peabody & Stearns church building.

The times called for renewal and restoration of confidence in the future of the church. The person entrusted with shaping the architectural imagery for such an undertaking was forty-year-old John Lawrence Mauran (1866-1933), the president of the board of trustees, who acted in effect as both architect and client. Mauran brought prestigious credentials to the job. Born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, he graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1889. After joining the Boston office of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge (successor firm to H. H. Richardson), Mauran was sent to the firm's Chicago office where he worked on the Chicago Art Institute and the Public Library. In 1892, he was transferred to St. Louis to manage a branch office. In 1900, Mauran formed a new partnership, Mauran, Russell & Garden, with colleagues from the Boston parent company. The new firm immediately gained important commissions for almost every building type: churches, office buildings, schools, residences, a department store, club houses, and libraries, including three buildings that are Union Avenue neighbors of the Church of the Messiah: Pilgrim Congregational Church (1906); Cabanne Branch Library (1906), and Smith Academy and Manual Training School (1905).

Mauran's marriage in 1896 to the St. Louisan, Isabel Chapman, had brought him into the Unitarian fold and connected him with the city's most prominent families. With strong family and social ties to past generations of church members, Mauran clearly understood the congregation's values and celebrated history. As president of the board of trustees, the architect also possessed intimate knowledge of the group's more modest needs, financial constraints, and uncertain future.

For the exterior, Mauran chose a simple English Gothic style respectful of the congregation's earlier Gothic style buildings and reflecting his personal preference for the English styles. Mauran's close attention to brickwork revealed the architect's Arts & Crafts interest in the expressive potential of materials, visible in the varying colors, tones, textures, patterning, and mortar joints. The brick was manufactured by the St. Louis-based Hydraulic-Press Brick Company; the firm was headed by a church member, Henry Ware Eliot, who was the son of Rev. William Greenleaf Eliot, and the father of the famous T. S. Eliot.

Mauran's personal commitment to the church project is especially revealed in the care he took with the interior design. He articulated the walls in a restrained, simple rectilinear grid alternating glazed rectangular zones with wall panels of warm, speckled buff brick and plastered insets. His sensitivity to materials is demonstrated in the natural warm brown wood, similar in color and tone to the brick. Wood is extensively employed for the open-timbered ceiling, the floor, pews, choir loft and organ case. Traditional Gothic ornament is confined to a few discreet motifs as can be seen, for example, in the base of the pew ends, in the chancel paneling, and in the leaded glass in the south transept.

Under Mauran's hand, the controlled architectural setting became a foil for displaying the sumptuous colors and forms exhibited in the Cottier windows. To showcase Cottier's rich color harmonies and also to admit abundant light, Mauran flanked each nave figural window with panels of silvery white leaded glass. He further lightened the interior by selecting identical silvery glass for the large west facade window. In their original context in the Peabody & Stearns church, the nave windows filled pointed arch lancet openings. Mauran retained the Gothic arch form and original glass borders, but refitted the window into new rectangular fenestration, filling in corners and sides with modern glass echoing colors in the Cottier glass. For the new glazing in the south transept, Mauran chose a radiant palette of non-figural glass in harmony with the Cottier windows and with the wood and brick wall treatment.

The dominant place assigned to the Cottier windows within the architectural setting also evoked a significant narrative meaning. The windows memorialized distinguished families who once comprised Rev. Eliot's congregation, thus creating a kind of local Unitarian "Hall of Fame." For example, Hudson E. Bridge (died 1875), a wealthy industrialist and the grandfather of Mauran's wife, was remembered in the large triptych in the north transept. Typical Cottier figures of heroic size illustrate Christ's words, "I was hungry and ye gave me meat, sick and ye visited me, naked and ye clothed me." Illustrated in the center nave window (south side) is a stunning example of Cottier's decorative style. The window was donated by the prominent merchant, John H. Louderman, and his wife, Georgiana Canter, in memory of their daughter, Georgiana, who died in 1875, at age 13. The Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, "The Reaper and The Flowers" (1839) provides both the title and the imagery of the window, showing an angel of death bearing a child upwards while a white dove descends to meet them; the inscription on the glass, however, comes from the New Testament, Luke: 20, verse 36; "Neither can they die anymore, for they are equal with the angels."

Collectively, the family names in the memorial windows represented the accomplishments of a generation of leaders who forged the destiny of the church as well as that of the city. To Mauran's generation of Unitarians, these family names were reminders of the congregation's mission, and offered inspiration to the present. Installed low to the floor, the windows in the nave and transept inhabit and interact with the spectator's space, creating an intimate linkage with the past.

The windows also affirmed an important heritage and continuity of religious culture for Mauran and fellow 20th-century church members. The prominence given to female figures in the windows aligns with the egalitarian and anti-hierarchical vision of church and society held by Unitarians and exemplified in the positions of Rev. Eliot and his congregation supporting women's suffrage and the general enhancement of the status of women. The unified program of New Testament parables in the chancel windows, the focal point of the church, express Rev. Eliot's Jesus-centered theology and his convictions about Christ's role as the supreme moral teacher. The message in the windows was Eliot's last hurrah at a time when more liberal wings of Unitarians challenged his conservative beliefs in the primacy of Christ. Records indicate that Mauran's generation defended Eliot's faith, so it is not surprising that the architect installed the pivotal chancel windows taken from Eliot's church in the same key location in his 1907 design.

The chancel windows express the Unitarian emphasis on moral education rather than dogma, deeds not creeds. Memorials to husband and wife Ebenezer and Theoline Richards, the windows appropriately portray subjects that are gender-oriented and relate to male and female spheres of activity, following the example of the New Testament parables that they illustrate. The inscription at the top of the center lancet reads, "God is a spirit," a concept that is manifested in the concrete actions of daily life portrayed in the images below and in the flanking windows. The left and right windows depict, respectively "The Good Samaritan" and "The Wise and Foolish Virgins." The center window offers male and female stories illustrating domestic virtue in "The Lost Coin" above, and male husbandry in "The Sower," located below the central scene showing "Jesus at the Well with the Woman of Samaria." Stylistically, the windows are noteworthy for the prominent display of large sunflowers, a decorative motif favored in the work of English Aesthetic Movement artists, decorators, and architects, suggesting a reference to the physical world of the senses, as contrasted to the lily, representing the spiritual world.

In 1920, the special bond between the architect, the building, and the congregation was expressed in the words of the pastor, "We feel the church is the work of our own hands and are correspondingly proud of it, and attached to it." A year after Mauran's death in 1933, the congregation paid him highest tribute by hanging a tablet on the church wall that repeated the epitaph over Christopher Wren's tomb in St. Paul's Cathedral, London: "If you seek his monument look around you." Mauran's efforts to renew the faltering congregation through architectural imagery eventually met defeat. In 1938, the Church of the Messiah merged with another Unitarian congregation, and the following year the consolidated First Unitarian Church sold the Church of the Messiah building to Bible Presbyterian Church of St. Louis. The next owner, in 1953, Parrish Temple Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church, an African-American congregation, held services there for almost fifty years before transferring the building in 2002 to Life Center International Church, Inc. The church building currently (2012) is vacant and listed for sale.

Building Description

Facing west, the Church of the Messiah [Unitarian], at 5261 Enright in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, is a cross-gabled Gothic Revival church with square, crenellated side-tower. The building was constructed in 1907 in brick trimmed with stone to designs of John Lawrence Mauran, a prominent local architect. Overall, the property has survived remarkably intact with only minor losses and alterations to the original fabric,

The church is situated among an impressive grouping of early 20^th Century institutional buildings (churches, schools, library, YMHA, and artist club house) on the east side of Union Avenue that make-up the western boundary of the Mount Cabanne District between Delmar Boulevard and Cabanne Avenue. Residential streets of substantial two and three-story brick and stone buildings dating from the 1890s to 1920s extend eastward from the institutional row on Union Avenue. The Church of the Messiah also stands inside the eastern boundary of the "Visitation Park Certified Local District" comprising several blocks of early 20^th Century residences along with institutional buildings located on the west side of Union Avenue.

The buttressed church, seating approximately 500, is on a cruciform plan. Inside, the church measures approximately 89 feet east-west, with a three-bay nave approximately 38 feet wide (north-south), and shallow transepts projecting 13 feet beyond the nave walls. Rising from a stone foundation, muted red brick walls are constructed of Hydraulic-Press Brick: "Hy-tex Sand Molded Brick" laid in English bond to the height of the water table, and above that, in Flemish bond with salt glazed headers. Limestone is employed for all exterior trim, including tracery and crenellation on the belfry, cap stones on all buttresses, carved detailing in surrounds of windows and doorways, and the weathered nameplate ("Church of the Messiah") placed above the large window in the west (primary) elevation. The roof, with wide overhanging eaves, is covered with asphalt shingling (originally, probably slate). The art glass windows are set in wood tracery and frames; basement windows have brick lintels and double-hung sash.

The two primary (west and south) entrances are located in the pyramidal-roofed tower, approached from the sidewalk by broad flights of concrete steps and landings, followed by speckled white/grey granite steps leading up to the doors. Original decorative wood tympana remain above pairs of replacement doors in the tower. One pair of original doors of vertical board with strap hinges survives in the secondary entrance, located at the north end of the west (primary) elevation; in 2003, this entrance received a handicap accessibility addition consisting of a freestanding wooden ramp with low railing running along the north elevation; the ramp terminates at a small platform (with wooden railing) that was constructed over the existing original stone steps, in front of the entry doors.

The rear (east) elevation features three tall, pointed arch windows of stained glass in the gabled chancel wall, and double-hung clear glass windows with deep brick lintels at the basement level and above. Entrances to the basement (housing Sunday School and social rooms) are located at the far north end of the east elevation, and at the southeast corner where the pointed arch entry is sheltered by a gabled roof. The articulation of the north (side) elevation, only a few feet distant from the neighboring building to the north (hence difficult to photograph), mirrors that of the south elevation except that the heads of transept windows are finished in brick rather than stone.

The interior of the church features exposed buff brick walls with limestone trim; open beam ceilings of wood; and wooden flooring except in the small entry vestibules (now carpeted, and likely stone or tile underneath). A balcony/choir loft extends across the west end of the auditorium, illuminated by the large leaded window of silvery white glass in the west wall. Original organ pipes and paneled wood casing survive against the north and south walls of the loft; a Kilgen organ (probably installed in 1907) is centered along the east side of the loft. A center aisle divides the auditorium into uniform rows of original wooden pews featuring tall, slender ends ornamented with simple recessed quatrefoil medallions; transepts provide additional seating with pews at right angles to those in the main body of the church; narrower side aisles run along the nave walls.

A stone pointed arch (painted white) marks the entrance to the shallow chancel, fitted with original wood paneling (now painted white) up to the base of three tall stained glass windows on the east wall; one panel unit opens to a passageway connecting auxiliary rooms (vestry and pastors study) at the north and south corners of the chancel area. The raised chancel floor has been extended with a platform that extends about nine feet into the auditorium space. The three-bay walls of the nave and the transepts are articulated with large glazed openings alternating with brick paneling with plastered insets.

The high raised basement is laid out with a large, open center space with an original raised platform/stage at the west end used for the Sunday School. The kitchen and dining areas are located at the east end, with a boiler room and lady's parlor in the north and south transepts, respectively.

Stained Glass Windows

Six windows in the nave (three on each side); three windows in the north transept wall; and three windows in the chancel (east wall) feature figural stained glass that was removed in 1906 from its original installation in an older (1880) Church of the Messiah sanctuary (burned and demolished in 1987), once located at Locust and Garrison streets in St. Louis. This program of glass was then reinstalled in the new Church of the Messiah, completed in 1907 at Union and Enright. The windows were designed and manufactured in 1879 by the London studio of Daniel Cottier; the original signature of the firm appears at the bottom of the "Susan A. Ware" memorial window ("Angel Musician") located on south side of the nave, west end, The subdued, earthy colors and monumental figural style exhibited in the subjects are well known. characteristics in Cottier's work. All other leaded glass windows date to the 1907 construction; the manufacturer has not been identified,

Identification of subjects and the persons memorialized in the Cottier windows:
CHANCEL: Ebenezer (d. 16 May 1875) and wife Theoline RICHARDS (d. 2 Sept 1879)
Left (north) ; "The Good Samaritan" (Luke, 10:30); inscription: "When he saw Him he had compassion."
Center ; At point of arch, inscription, "God Is A Spirit"
Top, "The Lost Piece of Money" (Luke, 15:8)
Middle, "Jesus at the Well with the Woman of Samaria" (John, 4:6)
Bottom, "The Sower" (Luke, 8:5)
Right (south): "The Wise & Foolish Virgins" (Matthew, 25:1); inscription:
"They that were ready went in with Him to the marriage."

SOUTH TRANSEPT, "new" 1907 glass (manufacturer, unknown)

NORTH TRANSEPT: Hudson E. BRIDGE (1810 - Feb. 25, 1875)
Right (east): "I was hungry and ye gave me meat" (Matthew, 25:34)
Center: "I was sick and ye visited me" (Matthew, 25: 34)
Left (west): "I was naked and ye clothed me" (Matthew, 25:34)

NAVE, NORTHSIDE:
East: Henry S. REED (d. 24 March 1877)
"Paul Taking Leave of the Elders at Miletus" (Acts, 20: 36)
Center: Emily Frances Partridge EATON (d. Sept. 8, 1872, wife of Lucien)
"The Charitable Dorcas" (Acts, 9:36)
West: Edward Y. WARE (d. 27 July 1877)
"Angel Musician"

NAVE, SOUTHSIDE
West: Susan A. WARE (d, 13 February 1870, wife of Edward Y. Ware)
"Angel Musician" (signature, Cottier & Co., London)
Center: Georgiana C. LOUDERMAN (died 6 March 1875, age 13)
"The Reaper and The Flowers," (H. W. Longfellow poem, 1839)
Inscription, "Neither Can They Die Any More For They Are Equal With The Angels" (Luke, 20:36)

East: Henry S. REED (d. 24 March 1877)
"Paul Taking Leave of the Elders at Miletus" (Acts, 20: 36)

WEST ORGAN LOFT & other silvery white glass (1907, manufacturer, unknown)

On both sides of the nave, each Cottier stained glass window is centered in a rectangular wood frame, flanked by rectangular casement windows filled with leaded glass of silvery white hue, admitting abundant light into the church; the base of each sidelight rests on a square panel filled with brickwork.

The north wall of the north transept displays a Cottier triptych with a tall, arched center window flanked by shorter, rectangular windows; all three lights are individually set into and separated by the brick wall. The shapes and placement of windows in the south transept mirror the fenestration composition in the opposing north transept, but the leaded glass in the south transept was new in 1907, displaying vibrant shades of yellow, green, and blue glass without figures or other design motifs.

The three chancel windows piercing the east wall are in the same location as they were found in their original installation in the 1880 Church of the Messiah building. The use of primary colors in some places brightens the chancel area (compared to the dominant tertiary colors used in the other Cottier windows); this practice was not uncommon for giving emphasis to the liturgical center of Protestant churches.