Friday, October 7, 2016

Cleveland area Protestant Glass

I like stained glass, i like simple geometric color, but figurative glass has more to say. Most, not all, is found in churches. Some churches are only open for services, and if one goes to his regular community he has closed the window of opportunity to see some. 

I am more familiar with local Catholic glass. Wednesday night, a speaker suggested to see the glass at Lakewood United Methodist. In a room that was not the sanctuary, a multi lancet window had a large Nativity of Jesus window in the South German painterly style. I believe, that was the window he wanted to be seen. It was a warm friendly window, but at that time of day anyway, it did not receive enough sunlight. In several Protestant churches there is a huge multi-panel, multi-scene window. This church had two such in the sanctuary. In roughly would be a west transept spot there was a window with ten main panels with fifteen scenes plus tracery windows. The choir loft had another such window. The back of this window is seen outside from Detroit Avenue. One panel has Cleveland's Terminal Tower, formerly the second tallest building in the United States.
Cleveland's oldest church is St. John Episcopalian in Ohio City, supra is the church's patron above the altar. The church no longer holds public services.
St. James Anglican left the Episcopal diocese, and holds Anglo-Catholic high church services. It is on Cleveland's East 55th and Payne, and this window is above their organ and faces East 55th from the outside.
In East Cleveland on Euclid Avenue is the former St. Paul Episcopalian, it is now one campus of  the Empowerment Church. I saw a note somewhere from an old book mentioning how proud the original congregation (1896) was of their John La Farge window. La Farge taught Louis Tiffany how to use opalescent glass in stained glass windows. It had rained the day when i came with camera, and it was gray outside. On a better day, with more time, better pictures could have been taken. The bottom half of the window was of little interest, but noted who the three lancets were memorials to. Also, there is an interesting series of windows on the life of St. Paul, and another on Jesus. An attached hall/school also has good looking c. 1900? windows. Maintenance has long been neglected.

La Farge's father-in-law was Oliver Hazard Perry. John Jr. became a Jesuit priest. A large La Farge is on Cleveland's Public Square in the Old Stone (Presbyterian) Church.

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