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| TRUST RESEARCH GRANT AIDS STUDENT'S STUDY OF LANCASTER CHURCH
With generous support from the Decorative Arts Trust, Winterthur Fellow Katie Wood spent the summer of 2006 studying the 1794 steeple of Trinity Lutheran Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Her study revealed a web of relationships that displayed the integral role the institution played in late 18th-century Pennsylvania culture and society. In late 1794, French land surveyor Theophile Cazenove traveled through portions of Pennsylvania and New Jersey in an effort to assess the value of the landscape. In November, Cazenove entered the city of Lancaster and remarked that “the new German Lutheran church is very well built, of brick, and its steeple is the best built and the most elegant one in the United States. It is a pity that the immense statues of the 4 Evangelists are too small by half.” It was a tremendous stroke of luck that Cazenove was traveling when he was—if he had passed through Lancaster only three months earlier, the church would have been covered in scaffolding, the steeple would have been unpainted, and there would have been no statues visible.
Not only was the Lancaster structure elegant and well-built, it was the only Protestant church in the region to employ the use of massive exterior figural ornament. What did the representations of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John do for this congregation, I asked, that it could not accomplish without them? Seeking an answer, I first examined the ways that the statues worked within the context of the church membership and the liturgy of the Lutheran “sacred.” Next, I explored the ways that the surrounding Lancaster community used the steeple and its figures in non-religious ways. Finally, I asked what kind of social and cultural links the structure provided between the two bustling cities of Lancaster and Philadelphia. Summer research began with work in the church’s archives in Lancaster. I found helpful documents related to the negotiation of steeple construction: notations in the account books covered the cost of raw materials like wood, bricks, and mortar; and libations for the workers. In addition, I spent time with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John themselves, in an effort to establish who might have been commissioned to create them. (see Fig. 1).
I also tried to untangle the debate over ornament that led to the commissioning of the statues in April, 1794, by combing the meticulously-penned daybooks of Henry Muhlenberg, Jr., at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. He was the Pastor of Trinity when the steeple went up, and was the person who ultimately decided that there would be statues on top. On September 5th, 1794, Muhlenberg wrote that the four figures were installed atop the steeple—less than five months after they were commissioned (see Fig. 2). What was the importance of Trinity Lutheran Church—and its magnificent steeple—to the greater city of Lancaster? While we often think of contemporary Lancaster as a quaint, “Pennsylvania Dutch” town, eighteenth-century Lancaster was actually the largest inland city in North America. Scores of English and German immigrants lived in the town, and both ethnic groups contributed to its social, cultural, and economic development. Maps from the Lancaster County Historical Society helped me contextualize the church within its environment. One object, a manuscript map circa 1800, shows a grid of downtown Lancaster with footprints for all of the religious congregations in town during the period (see Fig. 3). This interesting document confirms that Lancaster was a cosmopolitan place: it was rare for colonial towns to have the population or means to support so many religious groups at once. It is also an interesting map when we juxtapose it with early nineteenth century city views. A sampler by Lancaster resident Ann Herbst in the collection of the Lancaster Heritage Center uses the church building and its steeple as framing elements in the lower right corner; we can even see two well-appointed ladies making their way to services (see Fig. 4).
I consulted late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century tax lists; while tax lists don’t include public buildings like churches, they can provide valuable information concerning the homes and other private structures in the direct vicinity of the larger public buildings. Those lists helped me place the 1794 church in a larger urban landscape. Finally, I asked how the steeple at Trinity Lutheran church might have provided a temporal link between the bustling port of Philadelphia and the city of Lancaster. Trinity’s steeple made it second in height only to Philadelphia’s Christ Church. The structure itself was designed by a team of engineers from Philadelphia: Abraham and William Colladay. And the design—with the exception of the four evangelists—is strikingly similar to that of Christ Church. In 1795, one of first truly public art exhibitions in the new United States was sponsored by Charles Willson Peale’s Columbianum of Philadelphia. According to the catalogue, the Colladays displayed “The Draft of the wood-work of a Steeple built at Lancafter, and sundry other drawings of buildings” at this venue. While the original sketches are lost to us today, that reference documents the undeniable ties binding the steeple at Lancaster to eighteenth-century Philadelphia. I hope that this work will add to current scholarship exploring the relatively unexplored role of religious architecture and ornament in the culture of late-colonial Pennsylvania. In conclusion, Katie would like to thank the members of the Trust for their support and encouragement. She is more than happy to discuss her research and can be reached at MaWood34787@yahoo.com
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