page_title: Saint John's Church (Hagerstown, Maryland)
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Saint John's Church (Hagerstown, Maryland) / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: Detail of the Tennant Window, Saint John's Church, Hagerstown, MD.
context_page_description: St. John's Church, or St. John's Episcopal Church, founded in 1786, is an historic Episcopal church located at 101 South Prospect Street in the South Prospect Street Historic District of Hagerstown, Maryland. It is the seat of Saint John's Parish, Diocese of Maryland, which covers most of Washington County, Maryland.
context_section_description: The present church building, built in 1872, was an American adaptation of the Oxford Movement in sanctuary design. Other features included coursed rows of rough-hewn blue limestone with stringcourses, sills and lintels of brownstone, stained-glass Gothic windows; and a bell tower with a stone steeple.  Two heavy oak doors, painted red, are covered with elaborate scrolled pattern in bronze reminiscent of the Lichfield Cathedral in England.  The foyer at the tower's base is decorated in the Arts & Crafts style, the ceiling have sixty small six-point stars cut into the ceiling and illuminated from above.  In December 1871, a fire in the town's business district destroyed the Federalist style sanctuary built in 1832 at the corner of Jonathan and Antietam Streets.  The initial sanctuary space was sparsely, but tastefully, accommodated.
  In 1899, Mollie Magill Rosenberg, a former communicant, donated a high Gothic Altar and associated supporting pieces, including a reredos.  An identical matching set was installed at Grace Episcopal Church (Galveston, Texas), the Magill-Rosenberg family's home church, by Silas McBee.
  Easter Sunday 1899, Saint John's dedicated the High Altar and continued a 60-year journey transforming the Sanctuary from the colonial Neo-classical style to a style embracing England's Oxford Movement and the return to medieval forms. The transformation later continued, most notably through the replacement of the original windows with stained-glass designs depicting the life of Christ, chronologically, more or less. The donor, Mollie Magill Rosenberg, was spouse to Col. Henry Rosenberg, C.S.A.  Henry served as Switzerland's consul to Texas after 1869. Mrs. Rosenberg attended the Columbian Exposition in 1893, where the High Altar and its Reredos were on display in the Swiss Pavilion. Like the Oxford Movement, the Columbian Exposition highlighted revival, rather than progressive, movements in the arts and architecture. Abrupt changes in peoples’ lives during industrialization were thought to be ameliorated by antiquarian and, allegedly, more ‘authentic’ forms.
  The High Altar and Reredos are metaphors for Christ as the Word Incarnate. Saint John's wrought iron rood screen separates the Sanctuary from the Apex and Congregation. The Reredos is a scaled-down model of a larger more elaborate medieval gothic Rood Screen. The bronze relief at the center sits in what would have been the passageway from the Apex to the Sanctuary (through which the communicants would have witnessed the consecration of the Host). Above, a crossbridge (see the miniature passageway and small windows running laterally below the gables) connects what would have been the cathedral's north and south transepts. Such crossbridges allowed non-celebrating clergy to move about the cathedral on business, unseen, while Mass was said below. So while the Reredos is a reredos, it is also a model of a Rood Screen.
  Separating the Reredos from the High Altar is a Sanctus ribbon from the 1559 B.C.P., drawing on Isaiah 6:3 but lacking the Benedictus found in the 1549 B.C.P. Sanctus, derived from Matthew 21:9. The Sanctus is followed by Psalm 50:5, the call to be judged for the acts of one's life, before the Throne of God.
  The High Altar's base features a triptych of two Old Testament events laying foundations for Christ's priesthood. They flank a third central panel depicting the Last Supper at which Christ instituted the Holy Eucharist. The Old Testament carvings both concern Abraham: The Binding of Isaac Upon an Altar to God, Genesis 22:1-24 (left side) and the Blessing of Abraham by the High Priest Melchizedek of Salem Following the Battle of the Kings, Genesis 14:17-20 (right side). The Last Supper, John 13-21 (center), was carved from a print of the mural by Leonardo da Vinci for dining room wall of the monastery Santa Maria delle Grazie (Milan, Italy). Between the triptych's three panel carvings, the Swiss woodcarvers made an artistic pun, using as pillars supporting the Altar itself three Church fathers–Peter (Rome ), John (Antioch) and James (Jerusalem) – 
caption: Tennant Memorial Window.
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