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Holy Communion Episcopal Church

The Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion moved to University City in 1938 from Washington and Leffingwell (28th Street), where it had been located since a year after its founding in 1869.  That then-fashionable neighborhood had so many churches (including for a time two other Episcopal churches) that it was known as “Piety Hill.”  The original Holy Communion, now Jamieson Memorial CME, was completed in 1877 to designs of vestryman Henry G. Isaacs, one of the city’s leading architects.  It had unfortunate acoustical properties that plagued the congregation for many years, so special attention was given to the acoustics when the new church was designed in 1950 by Raymond E. Maritz (1894-1973).  In the twenties, Maritz and his partner Ridgely Young had been the most popular architects of large-scale period revival houses, designing many along Forsyth in Clayton and in all the private places.

The first building on the site was the white brick wing, designed by E.E. Christopher, formerly the city architect of St. Louis, with J.E. McClelland.  The stone and glass addition across the front of the 1938 wing was built in 1958-1959 to the designs of William Bernoudy and Edouard J. Mutrux, who were better known for their low-lying houses in a style influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright.  The font and many other furnishings of the church were brought from the old building.  The altar was originally placed in St. Mark’s Memorial Episcopal Church, located from 1887 to 1910 at Washington & Vandeventer.  The chapel off the left aisle is named for Robert Lee Enfield, a parishioner killed in World War II.  The etched windows screening the chapel from the church depict St. Francis giving praise for the natural world.  They were designed by Lea Kesterer in 1990 as a memorial to Wilma Sheperd and are among the most remarkable works of art glass in the city.

The first rehearsals of the Chamber Chorus were held at Holy Communion Church back in 1956, and more recently the women’s voices of the group were heard here in a program accompanied by Martha Shaffer on June 4, 1995.