St. James-the-Less Episcopal Church

St. James-the-Less closely resembles a real medieval building: a small, picturesque English country church of the early thirteenth century.  Its founders’ quest for architectural authenticity was connected to their effort to restore what they judged to be the authentic modes of Christian worship—as it had been before the rationalism of the Enlightenment stripped the Episcopal church of ritual, music, and divine mystery. 

The inspiration for both revivals—of architecture and liturgy—came from England.

St. James owes its existence to Robert Ralston (1795–1858), a wealthy China trade merchant, whose Mount Peace estate stood on the Ridge Road (now Ridge Avenue). His plan to build a church near his home was developed in a March 1846 conversation with his friend Rev. Samuel Jarvis (1785-1851). During a recent visit to England, Jarvis had learned of the Ecclesiological Society and its efforts to revive Gothic architecture as the appropriate setting for the reformed Anglican liturgy then being promoted by the “Tractarian” or “High Church” movement. 

In emulation of this English church-building effort, in April Ralston convened ten sympathetic friends at Mount Peace to form a vestry and join him in building “a country house of worship.” He then sought advice about the design from the president of the Ecclesiological Society, who suggested he study the drawings of a model church that he had already sent to Jarvis. These turned out to be of a real English country church: St. Michaels, Longstanton, Cambridgeshire, built about 1230 CE.

In June 1846 the vestry approved the plans, and in July the Mount Laurel Cemetery Company, which had been assembling its large adjacent tract, donated a parcel that abutted Mount Peace. To build the church, the Ralston hired the architect/builder John E. Carver (1803-1852).   

The cornerstone was laid on October 28, 1846. Certified as complete on October 31, 1848, the church was consecrated on May 26, 1850. Although Carver had lengthened the nave by one bay, most of the strong, simple “Early English” Gothic forms of Longstanton were faithfully transported to Philadelphia: a muscular, doubled buttressed east end, slender lancet windows slicing through rough, random masonry, and a two-tiered bellcote on the peak of the roof. 

Inside and out, St. James embodies the fundamental Tractarian principle that the chancel, where the mystery and miracle of the mass is celebrated, must be clearly separated from the nave, where the people gather. Externally, this entails a break in the roofline, and inside the division is marked by both the masonry chancel arch and a “rood screen.”  The first screen, of wood, was criticized by the watchful Ecclesiological  Society as inadequate, and in1878 it was replaced by a more impressive divider made of copper, brass, and iron and set with semiprecious stones. The designer was Charles M. Burns.

Throughout the construction process, Ralston frequently sought the advice of Benjamin Webb, secretary of the Ecclesiological Society. Webb put him in touch with William Butterfield, a young English architect who was a favorite of the Society, and Butterfield sent him a copy of Instrumenta Ecclesiastica (1847), an compendium of model church fittings and furnishings that he had designed. The pews, choir stalls, and door ironwork of St. James are based on those examples, and Butterfield specially designed the liturgical silver (chalice, patten, and offering bowl) that was made for the church by the John Kell in London. 

Ralston accepted Webb’s recommendation to lay a floor of tiles made by Mintons of Staffordshire, and the firm donated the tiling of the wall behind the altar. The three lancet windows above the altar have magnificent French glass by Alfred and Henri Gerente of Paris, who later provided the glass in the west window.

The Wanamaker Memorial Tower in the churchyard was the gift in 1908 of Rodman Wanamaker, son of the department store founder, to provide a resting place for his brother Thomas. Other members of the family have subsequently come to repose in its crypt. The design of the bell-topped tower was by John Windrim. A rather bulky sacristy replaced the vestry on the north side of the chancel in 1927-1929.