2500 North 21st Street (at Benton)
St. Louis, Missouri 63106

The St. Louis Chamber Chorus takes pride in its long association with Christ Church Cathedral (last performing here May 15, 1999), which can fairly be said to be the single most important church in the St. Louis classical music scene. The building is also unique among St. Louis churches in having been named a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior. This honor, awarded in 1995, is a step above listing in the National Register of Historic Places and indicates national significance. The church is the most important surviving work by Leopold Eidlitz (1823-1909), the New York architect, born in Prague, who was recognized in his day as one of the leading architects in the nation, and in fact Christ Church was acknowledged to be the finest of his thirty church designs.

The Episcopal parish of Christ Church, founded in 1819, started its third building in 1859, but the Civil War halted construction, and the church was not occupied until 1867. The tower and porch were not added until 1910, and if you look closely, you can see where the flying buttresses have never been completed. The church was made the cathedral, the seat of the bishop, in 1888. Eidlitz envisioned it as French Gothic of the thirteenth century, but his rounded apse was screened in 1910 by the monumental reredos by English sculptor Harry Hems, giving the church a more English appearance. Plans made in 1940 by Nagel & Dunn to move the organ from the transcepts to the rear balcony were carried out twenty years later, and further renovations in 1968 by Burks & Landberg moved the altar to the crossing, replaced the pews with movable chairs, and added the metal balcony below the clerestory windows, a feature which gives the nave a flavor of the Italian Gothic. The hanging banners represent parishes of the diocese.

The interior walls of the church were originally plastered, but they were later covered with a special kind of tile known as Guastavino tile, a structural material often used to create large light-weight vaults. It looked like stone, but unlike stone it soaked up sound, and sealants have had to be applied over the yWhen Zion Church was built in 1895, St. Louis Place was the focus of German religious and cultural life in north St. Louis. You can still see the former First German Baptist Church at 2629 Rauschenbach, across the long park, which was laid out by John O’Fallon in 1850. The old Second German Swedenborgian Church is at the corner of St. Louis Avenue. Up the street at 2926 North 21st is the Freie Gemeinde or Free Thinkers Association building, which had its own library and gymnasium. Brewer Charles Stifel donated a statue of Friedrich Schiller to the park in 1897, but it has been moved to 14th and Market.

Zion was founded in 1860 as the last of four churches in the Generalgemeinde, a united congregation under the leadership of Trinity Lutheran Church in Soulard, a church long familiar to Chamber Chorus audiences. Zion’s first building at Blair and Warren is now the oldest surviving Lutheran church in the St. Louis area, although long in other uses. The architect of the present building, Albert Knell, was born in Canada, trained in Zurich and Stuttgart, and worked with Henry Isaacs on the design of the Mercantile Library, whose rich interiors survived until recently. This impressive limestone Gothic building, originally seating over 1200, is derived from the English Decorated style, notable especially in the patterns of ribbing on the ceiling, which follows the line of the roof.

The windows depict the Good Shepherd and “Suffer the Little Children” in the transepts and the Resurrection at the west end. The intensely blue rose window over the altar, apparently more recent in date, centers on the Lamb of God from the Book of Revelation, an image which also appears on the marble altar. Other altar sculptures show Christ’s nativity and ascension, and the figures of Moses (with the tablets) and Paul (with a sword, the symbol of his martyrdom). These, along with the sumptuous pulpit, lectern and font, are works of Schrader and Conradi, northside sculptors. Joseph Conradi (1867-1936) was born in Berne, Switzerland, and studied in Italy. Specializing in liturgical art, he designed Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Hyde Park in 1897 and went on to produce religious buildings and sculptures all over the western United States.

A Moeller organ is in the loft above the altar. Rebuilt in 1960, it currently seeks a benefactor to releather its stops. The 16-bell carillon by Stuckstaede Bell Foundry was originally pulled by ropes but is now operated from a small console in the narthex.

The Benton side of the church preserves a reminder of the church’s German heritage in the inscription “Sontags Schule” for Sunday school. The recently refurbished parsonage next to it has a stone front matching the church. The former parochial school buildings on the north side of Benton date from 1909 and 1929 and are now devoted to neighborhood outreach programs.

May 19, 2002 marked the first performance by the Chamber Chorus at Zion Lutheran Church.
ears to restore the building’s bright and resonant accoustics.

Christ Church has an unusually varied collection of stained glass, beginning with the original 1860s windows with their bright primary colors in the transepts and north aisle. The west window from 1896 is by Charles Kempe, a leading English maker, and two small windows of 1917 by the New Yorker Louis Comfort Tiffany are in the north aisle.

Other notable works of art include the nave pulpit by sculptor Clark Fitz-Gerald entitled The Fabric of Envolvement (1969), the wooden doors to the baptistery in the tower, designed by Frederick Dunn and given by Temple Israel (1941), and the Bofinger Chapel in the south aisle, originally built in 1896 to designs of J.B. Legg but remodeled by Dunn in 1961 for use as a columbarium. His ashes and those of his former partner Charles Nagel are buried there.

Notes by Esley Hamilton and Philip Barnes
Photos by Roger Hill