LIVING HISTORY
HOLY APOSTLES EPISCOPAL CHURCH
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Built in Fort Pierce in 1902, Holy Apostles Episcopal Church was designed in classic Carpenter Gothic style.
WINDOW WONDERS
The elder Emery also gave his fellow parishioners a
crash course on the difficult medium.
“My father was John and he worked on the stained glass
for St. John,” Wichmann said.
One parishioner designed the 11 windows, one for each
apostle. Another parishioner created the templates. Wichmann
herself was one of the gluers who affixed the pieces
of colored glass to tempered glass.
The labor of love took 10 years to complete.
Popular with houses and small churches in the late 19th
century, the Carpenter Gothic, or Rural Gothic style of
Holy Apostles is a simple adaptation of Gothic features
such as pointed arches and steep gables. A perfect example
is the background house in Grant Wood’s iconic American
Gothic painting.
In an effort to save this vanishing genre of American architecture,
several homes and churches have been dismantled
and moved to other locations. Holy Apostles is one of
very few to have been barged as is to be saved.
The carpenters that built these structures knew their
craft well and birthed buildings that depended on Mother
Nature’s own building materials to better withstand any
later tormenting. The sturdy cypress used in Holy Apostles
seems impervious to weather and vermin.
“Termites don’t bother cypress,” Wichmann said. >>
Hurricanes have come and gone without
harming Holy Apostles, except for shingles
lost during the back-to-back storms of 2004.