It’s one of those stories
that everybody loves.
At the turn of the last
century, members of a small church in Ohio commissioned Louise Comfort Tiffany
to create seven large stained glass windows for their church. Then came the
1950’s. The church was razed to make way
for highway building.
The story might have ended but
a group of church people pooled their money and purchased the salvaged windows
back from the state highway department. The windows were crated up but the
church was never rebuilt. The crates found their way to a sister congregation
in Pennsylvania where they were stored in members’ basements and attics. The crates were finally opened after nearly 50
years and a glass authority confirmed their value.
The windows have been
beautifully restored (amazingly enough, very little damage resulted from their
long sleep) and are traveling the circuit of medium sized art museums. I visited the Memorial Art Gallery Sunday
with out-of-town guests: the windows and their survival story were receiving
attention from a respectful audience.
(And, by the way, our art
museum has done an outstanding job of presenting this modest little show.)
Obviously, reviewing this
story, one must wonder what treasures we’ve lost over the years to the
bulldozer of progress.
I spent most of my early life
in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, yoked to the Olivet (southern) Baptist Church, built sometime around 1900. It
was the core of our social, educational, cultural and spiritual universe. When I was 4 or 5 years old, Grandma Clark, the ancient woman who lived next door, told me how she, her husband and
other true believers carried stones down from the upper hill until the pile was
enough to build Olivet Baptist (it got its name by member vote).
I
remember that building as being huge: I’m certain it was not. I remember it as substantial
and beautiful. Maybe. It’s gone and the
four-lane highway there now is none of those things.
(I took my g-kids on an auto
tour of the city Saturday to find all those aforementioned wall murals. I stand pat on my previous analysis. It was fun driving around with the list on
the hunt but I don’t need to see them twice.)
