Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2008 - (Page 74) The small brick church of St. Stephen‘s Episcopal near Innis in Along with Richard Upjohn, who was made an honorary member Pointe Coupee Parish is picture-perfect Gothic Revival of the midof the society, Wills provided guidelines for the proper style for 19th century. Its square tower, the chancel lower than the nave, newly built churches. Along with St. Stephens, such churches as and the buttresses separating the pointed arched windows along Trinity Episcopal in Cheneyville and Grace Church in St. the sides make it a textbook example of the ideal Gothic Revival Francisville, both built around 1860, are among those that show church advocated by the influential Ecclesiological Society the influence of these new ideas. The Ecclesiological Society, formed in 1845 in England, grew As settlers established new communities throughout America out of a movement begun a decade before by the Cambridge during the 19th century, these communities relied on the easy Camden Society. Both groups were inspired by the theories of availability of wood and the skill of carpenters (since invariably architect and author A.W.N. Pugin, whose books were published there were no architects) to build their houses and churches. The in the 1830s and 1840s. Pugin considered his own era as lacking tiny Church of Nativity in Rosedale (Iberville Parish) reflects in morality and that the medieval era — specifically the 13th and Richard Upjohn’s recommendations for wood churches in the 14th centuries — represented the epitome of a principled society. Gothic Revival style. Built for a congregation established in 1858, Convinced that architecture could the church reflects the simplicity and honesty he espoused in the influence social behavior, his solution use of warm-colored brown wood. The vertical board-and-batten to the ills of the day was to build more siding, the steeply pitched roof, and the pointed arched windows, St. Philomena churches and to fashion them in the four to each side, emphasize the vertical qualities that Upjohn Church in forms of those earlier centuries: the considered appropriate for rural locations. As well, the use of Labadieville, Gothic. wood was an honest expression of the character of its wooded Assumption Pugin’s views were adopted setting. Parish, 1888 enthusiastically by architects and More elaborate versions of these small wooden churches, such clergy alike, and Gothic-styled as St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Clinton of 1871, are architecture swept Britain. The stylistically known as Carpenter Gothic for their clear expression of passion for Gothic Revival the carpenter’s skill. Surely the carpenters and builders who architecture was quickly taken produced these delightful churches, and the congregations who up in America and promoted in used them, were as enchanted by their charming picturesque the writings and drawings of qualities as much as for the moral character the Gothic forms architects Frank Wills and were supposed to elicit. Richard Upjohn in the 1850s. The Clinton church has a small gabled bell tower and the Frank Wills was one of the decorative bargeboards that outline the eaves of its steeply founding members of the New York Ecclesiological Society in Church of Nativity in Rosedale, 1848 and its Iberville Parish, 1859 architectural expert. KAREN KINGSLEY 74 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Spring 2008 KAREN KINGSLEY
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