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By Nathan Brockman

I slept next to Richard Upjohn, the nineteenth century architect of American churches, for five years when I was a teenager. My parents and I lived then in the rectory of a defunct parish church, and the church and the rectory shared a small property. My bed and the Upjohn church were a communion wafer’s throw away from each other. 

During those years, which were, I remind you, teenage years, I felt sometimes lifeless and at other times emboldened, energetically pursuing what could be described as supra ecclesial behaviors. Wine was involved, as were community gatherings, and there was even a vision or two, but I’m not sure what I was up to would garner Church sanction. My bedroom happened to be in the old parish hall, and was suited for mischief both in its separation from the rest of the rectory, and in its three — count ‘em — three separate entrances for secretive comings and goings. I was a teenager doing teenager things in such proximity to this church, a presence both monumentally ghostlike and perpetually judgmental.

Did I know at the time that the church was likely designed by one of the most influential architects of the nineteenth century? Certainly not. And if I did, I wouldn’t have given a holy hoot.

What I’ve realized though is that the Upjohn hits just keep on coming. The first came when I was a boy, touring some of the English countryside churches Upjohn would have known as a child, with my father, an Episcopal priest, as tour guide (a special brand of torture for a ten year old). When it was time for me to find a first real professional job, I was hired by Trinity Wall Street, whose Trinity Church was one of Upjohn’s most famous creations. On my way into work, I found myself commuting by the building Upjohn lived in during Trinity’s construction.

Tracking Upjohn feels a bit like tracking bits of myself. But my story is only symbolic of many people’s Upjohn encounters. If you live within two hundred miles of the eastern U.S. seaboard, odds are you’ve had brushes with Upjohn as well. You might even begin to feel, as I did, that Upjohn’s influence is so uncannily ubiquitous that a tour should be organized. Then you look at a map and realize you can travel from Maine to Manhattan stopping at an Upjohn church every fifty miles on average.

The trip took two days.

I began at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Bangor, Maine. The original had been destroyed by fire, but Upjohn’s son, Hobart, built a copy. I ended at the southern tip of Manhattan, at Trinity Church. My beginning and ending were suggested by Upjohn’s career: he was recommended for the Trinity job by someone who had seen his work in Bangor. Trinity would propel him into notoriety and into developing a creative solution for helping the numerous churches with little funding that asked for his services — his book of designs, Upjohn’s Rural Architecture.

Along the way, I saw surprises — hawks and turkeys, alpaca farms, and college students in front of the church in Troy, New York, lit by sunset, singing the pop song Faith. I drove over ten miles of dirt road and saw firsthand how hard are the hard times in the industrial towns up the Connecticut River.

Some visits have crystallized into a single image. From Bellows Falls, Vermont, I remember looking up at a gold cross set against Gothic clouds. In Albany, I was taken with the shadow a steeple cast onto the Crown Plaza Hotel.

I looked forward to seeing how wild was St. John’s in the Wilderness and how high was St. Philip’s in the Highlands. St. John’s, which has a state park in its backyard, welcomed campers for prayer. Its clapboard was a picture of plain, barn-ish beauty.

For a church-tour reunion, I met my father in Poughkeepsie, and we stopped at Holy Comforter. We found gates shut with padlock and chain, and, across the street, Rose Gerbo, the self-described “Queen of Poughkeepsie.”

“It’s beautiful on the inside,” said Rose. “But it’s only open on Sundays.”

Other churches were as wonderfully open as the people who ran them. The Highlands are in Garrison, New York. There, the Rev. Francis Geer was full of stories – George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and gunmaker Robert Parrott all had a place in his church’s history. He noted that St. Philip’s was a “real” Upjohn church, and not only because Upjohn’s grave was in the churchyard; it wasn’t designed by the Upjohn firm, nor by one of his sons, but by the man himself, who was a member of the church and lived just down the road.

We found the little yellow house and drove down a dirt driveway for a photograph my father took – forgive him his trespasses. Fr. Geer was pleased to point out the Victorian influences that grace his church — the pastel tile on the roof, for instance, as though Upjohn had emerged from a Gothic tunnel to see some light.

I learned that a two-day church tour covering nearly six hundred miles can be exhausting, and I felt refreshment at Christ Church in Riverdale—a sentry standing in the cause of calm beauty just north of the great city.

I saw churches being taken for granted in the best possible way. We’ve stopped thinking of these buildings as remarkable, because they’ve been such durable parts of our lives. Churches were described to me as “nothing special.” Bowdoin students weren’t terribly impressed by their chapel, but I did happen upon Forrest Dillon playing Bach and Scarlatti on harpsichord inside. It was sound to match the sight of the nave’s robin’s-egg-blue ceiling, richly restored murals, and stained glass coming to life with the morning sun.

What was consistent from church to church was the feeling of journeying from one dreamy repositioning of medieval architecture to the next, and meeting people who associate those structures with everyday life in America.

And the trip also confirmed that we’ve all slept next to Upjohn, commuted by him, played by him, worked or studied by him.

The architect’s ghost is alive and well, and speaking through stone and wood to hundreds of thousands of people every day. Given his influence, I think it can safely be asserted that Upjohn says to so many, “this is what Church looks like (particularly an Episcopal church).” His work deserves both celebration and consideration for the way it affects everyday lives outside the churches he built, such as mine as a teenager, and the faithful lives who cross his holy thresholds.

Nathan Brockman is director of communications for Trinity Wall Street.

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