| St. Luke’s Episcopal Church is a Gothic Revival building designed according to the dictates of the Ecclesiological Society. The Society held that proper Christian worship could take place only in churches modeled after medieval English precedents. St. Luke’s Parish consulted several architects, including Robert Cary Long, Jr., John Notman and Frank Wills, before selecting the Baltimore firm of Niernsee and Neilson. Services were first held in the unfinished church in November 1853, while it would take 15 more years until the building was completed. J. W. Priest, also a proponent of the ecclesiological approach and a founder of the American Institute of Architects, was hired in 1857 to repair structural problems and complete the design and construction. The Gothic features of St. Luke’s include a clerestory and side aisles, lancet and rose windows, quatrefoil tracery, buttresses and a crenelated tower.St. Luke’s Church is located at 217 North Carey Street, within the Franklin Square Historic District, at the northeast corner of the square. Public access is restricted. |
Photo by William Morgan, National Register of Historic Places Photo by Jeff Joeckel, National Register of Historic Places |