St. Philip's Church of Charleston: An Early History of the Oldest Parish in South Carolina (None) by Anderson Dorothy Middleton & Eastman Margaret Middleton Rivers

Author:Anderson, Dorothy Middleton & Eastman, Margaret Middleton Rivers [Anderson, Dorothy Middleton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2015-05-04T04:00:00+00:00

The fire had occurred just before the great financial panic of 1837, and Charleston’s economy was in a depressed state. St. Philip’s was likewise affected by the depression. The vestry stated in 1835 that income from leases of the buildings on the Glebe lands had expired, and it was obliged to pay for improvements. In addition, a depreciation of the property and the land caused the Glebe holdings to lose so much value that some buildings could not be sold for the sums that the vestry had paid for the buildings alone. Public aid for rebuilding the church was denied because the congregation was a rich corporation. In spite of numerous setbacks, funds to rebuild were raised. On November 12, 1837, the cornerstone of the new building was laid amid appropriate ceremonies. 193

After the fire, the city attempted to widen Church Street by having St. Philip’s porticos and steeple moved east. The vestry maintained that a fine steeple was more ornamental than a wide street. In the end, a compromise was worked out, with the street continuing to curve around a tower and the projecting porticos. 194

The vestry asked architect Joseph Hyde to rebuild the church exactly as it had been. However, he persuaded the members to replace the massive interior Tuscan columns with lighter Corinthian columns after the style of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London. The new church was built of brick on the same foundations, except for an extension of twenty-two feet eastward (the chancel end). Modifications from the original church included the following:

The floor was raised above the ground about three feet; steps of stone being used to ascend to the three porches at the west end of the building, and to the two doors central on the side walls; a chancel, recessed about fifteen feet, and lightened with a wide and lofty window, proved an important addition to the interior; the two side-aisles were put immediately next to the side walls; one hundred and two pews on the floor provided five hundred and fifty sittings, while thirty-six in the galleries, reached by stairs in the vestibule, provided two hundred and fifty more, making accommodations, without crowding, for upwards of eight hundred persons . 195

The new church was consecrated by Bishop Bowen on November 9, 1838. Ten years later, Edward Brickle White, a communicant of St. Philip’s, designed a two-hundred-foot spire in the English Renaissance steeple style, in the Wren-Gibbs tradition. The $84,206.01 cost of the new church was reported to the congregation in July 1839. James P. Welsman donated an organ, which was made in London at a cost of $3,500. The subsequent cost of erecting a steeple raised the total to nearly $100,000. 196

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