The desecration of St. Paul's

Archival image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

As a choirboy at Boston's Cathedral Church of St. Paul in the 1970s, I was always vexed and perplexed by the uncarved, uneven stone blocks in the church's crowning pediment as I faced the façade on my way to weekly rehearsals and Sunday morning services. Compromising the Greek Revival grace and refinement of the old stone temple front – which was built of light Quincy granite hauled from the Quincy quarries on America's first railroad and Ionic columns of brown sandstone quarried from Acquia Creek in Stafford County, Virginia – the pediment seemed to hunger for something to fill that gap, to climax the cathedral with a sublime signature that sanctified its patron saint in an artistic and proper Bostonian way.

In fact, the church's original 1819 Greek Revival design by Alexander Parris (of Quincy Market fame) and Solomon Willard (of Bunker Hill Monument fame) had called for a detailed bas-relief of St. Paul preaching before King Agrippa II to be carved into the crowning pediment.

St. Paul Before Agrippa and Bernice by David Martin (1639-1721).

It would have resembled the pediment bas-relief above, on St. Paul's Cathedral in London, had it been executed, and would have likely been modeled on various artistic interpretations of Paul's homily to Agrippa, Bernice and Roman governor Festus on his Christian conversion and the realization of Old Testament prophecies of Jesus Christ's suffering, death and resurrection, as recorded in Acts 26 in the New Testament. This carving would have been just the artistic finishing touch of Bostonian academic erudition this fine work of architecture called for. Alas, a shortage of funds made it not to be.

Photo by Beyond My Ken, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Well, the pediment was finally filled after two centuries. Only this nautilus whimsy backed in shocking blue isn't what I had in mind. True, this sculpture – "A Ship of Pearl" by Donald Lipski – was intended as a universal metaphor for spiritual evolution based on Oliver Wendell Holmes' poem The Chambered Nautilus, promoting the Cathedral as a "House of Prayer for All People" (Isaiah 56:7) rather than an Episcopalian coterie.

St. Paul's Cathedral at night. Photo by Father Tim.

But the neon of the nautilus clashes violently with the historic architecture and cheapens its public effect, especially at night (right), much in the vein of that image of mass communication (and miscommunication) in Simon & Garfunkel's song: "And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made, and the sign flashed out its warning..." And it is a warning about what we're in for when we enter.

Former interior, Cathedral Church of St. Paul. Photo by Daderot.

No, not this. This was the cathedral before its makeover. In proper Episcopalian form, rows of wooden pews faced the half-domed choir chancel (renovated by Ralph Adams Cram in 1912), physically reinforcing the sanctity of its ministers and bishops over its parishioners, and providing the choir and organist with a good acoustical channel to the congregation.

St. Paul's Cathedral before its renovation. Photo courtesy of Pinterest.

And what a coherent composition it made! The mahogany rails of the original pews (though their doors had been removed and their floors raised before I joined the choir) lent a touch of old-time New England, and blended smoothly with the chancel's carved reredos, choir benches and wainscoting that were part of Cram's sensitive remodel.

Look at it now: Original pews ripped out, replaced with freely placed chairs. Floor tackily redone with a zany labyrinth design in line with the funk of the nautilus. Altar relocated to the center. Skylights punched into the old coffers. Original windows replaced with those thermal-paned tack-ons with fake muntins, now half closed off. 

Understandably, the church wanted a more flexible, accessible meetinghouse-styled sanctuary with more democratically arranged seating in circles (for which the labyrinth provides a handy floor plan) that enabled the minister to communicate equally to all parishioners of all races, colors, genders and abilities, and "to better house a full range of ministries," as the renovation's designers, Context Architecture, put it. But this took away the Greek Revival / Classical Revival coherence of Parris's and Cram's historical visions, reducing the interior to a generic parish hall furbelowed with the frippery of historical chintz. 

Photo courtesy of the Organ Historical Society.

Even the magnificent Aeolian-Skinner loft organ that my choir director, Thomas Murray, loved to play – and I still remember the rumbles, swells and echoes of its diapasons in his stellar performance of Eugène Gigout's Grand Choeur Dialogué – was dismantled, put in storage, and listed for sale through the Organ Clearing House, to make way for...

...a handicapped-acessible elevator. Which is also understandable, given the demands of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and many churches' efforts to accommodate people of varying physical capacities. But history was lost in the process, and the church no longer exhibits its historical evolution of fine craftsmanship through the ages.

The chancel, too, broke the molds of history to extend outward into the nave to be closer to the worshippers, bidding farewell to the minister/congregation dichotomy of New England Anglican and Episcopal churches from King's Chapel to Old North to St. Paul's. The checkerboard floor looks as tacked on as the labyrinthine seating plot. 

Photo courtesy of the Organ Historical Society.

Now St. Paul's interior yields a very different effect for me from when I paraded with my fellow choirboys up the central aisle to the choir chancel, and back toward the narthex at the end of the service, while singing "God of Our Fathers" to the organ's brassy fanfare, "Onward, Christian Soldiers," and other majestic hymns every Sunday morning, and hearing the organ's soft bell-chimes solemnly close the service before Mr. Murray's postlude performance of Charles-Marie Widor's Toccata rip-roared away.

At night, St. Paul's Cathedral seems to blend more with the neon shop signs and late-night office lights than with the rest of Boston's historic architecture, on account of the neon nautilus glitz of what filled its pediment – which, indeed, comes across more like advertising than artistic homage to a saint. This is a vulgar desecration of New England's first Greek Revival church, in the name of no-more-kings social progress. I love the causes, but not the context.

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

Sources:

"Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Boston, Massachusetts 1907 -> 2017," r/OldPhotosInRealLife, Reddit, 2023, https://www.reddit.com/r/OldPhotosInRealLife/comments/18zztth/cathedral_church_of_st_paul_boston_massachusetts/

"Cathedral Church of St. Paul (Boston)," Wikipedia, last edited on 3 September 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_Church_of_St._Paul_(Boston)

"Cathedral Church of St. Paul," Context Architecture, 2015, https://www.contextarc.com/cathedral-church-of-st-paul

"History," The Cathedral Church of St. Paul, https://stpaulboston.org/history

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, The Chambered Nautilus, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44379/the-chambered-nautilus

Martin, David, "Paul Before Agrippa and Bernice," Pitts Theology Libary, Emory University, https://dia.pitts.aws.emory.edu/image_details.cfm?ID=113153

Morgan, Keith N., "St. Paul's Cathedral," Society of Architectural Historians Archipedia, https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MA-01-BD3

Osteen, Henry, "St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral Church in Boston," Boston Mass, Vintage, Facebook, February 17, 2025, https://www.facebook.com/groups/513744017561133/posts/836330418635823/

"The Cathedral Church of St. Paul," Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, 2026, https://www.diomass.org/about-us/cathedral-church-st-paul

The tower that stumped Boston

Students, professors, alums, lend me your eyes:

Did you ever notice the Gothic tower relief crowning your head as you entered any of the pointed portals of Boston University's Charles River Campus on your way to a class, lecture or meeting? Did you pause to ponder this symbol's scholastic significance? Did you dismiss it as frilly frippery? Did its sublime symbolism stump you?

Stop.

Look up.

Think.

Think back about 700 years ago and 3,000 miles away to a small port town in Lincolnshire, England, a town first known as...

St. Botolph's Town

Gradually contracted to Bottleston, Botston, and ultimately Boston, this Norman-era settlement on the River Witham became the namesake of Boston, Massachusetts, when some of its natives settled there with John Winthrop and his Massachusetts Bay Company in 1630. Olde Boston's signature landmark was, and is, the tower of St. Botolph's Church, visible for miles across Lincolnshire's flatlands and wetlands. Named for 7th-century abbot Botwulf of Thorney, or Botolph — meaning "boat-helper" because he prayed for fishermen to have a good catch (he is also England's patron saint of travelers and farming) — St. Botolph's Church was built from 1309 to 1590 in the era's perpendicular Gothic style. Crowning its 242-foot bell tower is an octagonal lantern of pinnacles, finials and flying buttresses.

The planned construction of a spire atop the lantern was preempted by political upheavals leading to the Hundred Years' War and the formation of the Church of England — hence St. Botolph's Church's sobriquet, the "Boston Stump."

Stumping the States

Woolworth Building (1913, Cass Gilbert)
Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress

Harkness Tower (J. Rogers)
Photo by Sage Ross, Wikipedia

Cass Gilbert's "Cathedral of Commerce," the 1913 Woolworth Building in New York City, sparked a revival of fascination with the heavenly reach of the Gothic as an expression of the vertical soar of the skyscraper. This made the Boston Stump the perfect prototype for office skyscrapers, college towers and cathedrals across the country, as architectural expressions of upward mobility, academic achievement and spiritual attainment.

Tribune Tower (1925, R. Hood)
Photo by Ben Miller, Wikipedia

Cathedral of Learning (1926, C. Klauder)
Photo by Pjah73, courtesy of Flickr.com

James Gamble Rogers' Harkness Tower at Yale University was one among many "Boston stumps" erected across the United States for commercial, collegiate or cathedral purposes, demonstrating the Stump's malleability when Gothic morphed into Art Deco with the changing tastes and times.

American Radiator Building (1928, R. Hood)
Photo by Jean-Christophe Benoist, Wikipedia

Cathedral of Hope (1935, R.A. Cram)
Courtesy of National Register of Historic Places

Others included Raymond Hood's Chicago Tribune Tower, Charles Klauder's Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, Hood's American Radiator Building (now the American Standard Building) in New York, and Ralph Adams Cram's Cathedral of Hope, or
East Liberty Presbyterian Church, in Pittsburgh.

Here, Cram gave the Stump its due: the spire. His strict adherence to the Boston Gothic in the face of modernism's forward-march made him a prime candidate for giving Boston
its due with...

The Boston-to-Boston connection

Photo courtesy of WBUR's Photostream on Flickr.com

Cram & Ferguson, in strategic alliance with Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott and Boston University President Daniel L. Marsh, envisioned B.U.'s new Charles River campus as an expansive but intimate city-within-a-city of diverse Gothic buildings, unifying and expanding the College of Liberal Arts, the School of Law and the School of Theology around two quadrangles along the riverbank.

The signature landmark would be the Alexander Graham Bell Memorial Tower — the New Boston Stump — crowning Marsh Chapel, reflected on the river, boldly bespeaking Boston's transatlantic origins, and tolling the bell to the telephone's inventor, who had been a B.U. professor of vocal physiology at the time.

Photo by BardofL, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

St. Botolph's compositional contrast between the vertical stump-tower's upward progression of lancets, flying buttresses and crests and the horizontal gable-chapel's repetitive regiment of buttresses, finials and stained-glass windows would be re-realized as the centerpiece of Boston University's hallowed halls of high academia, lofty learning and sublime scholarship.

Thus it would compete with Harvard and MIT for Charles River reverence, counterpointing their Georgian cupolas and classical domes with a Gothic tower.

Alas, like its English ancestor, political upheavals and war would stump the tower — but this time the whole tower, not the spire.

The new campus plans were announced in the Boston University News on October 24, 1928, but were stalled by the stock market crash precisely one year later, followed by the September 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland that initiated U.S. involvement in World War II.

Those fiscal fallouts ultimately scaled down the campus design to the stripped, simplified Collegiate Gothic superblocks, centrally connected by Marsh Chapel and its Gothic-arcaded cloister wings, as we know them today. Completed seven years after Ralph Adams Cram's death in 1942, they show the absence of his guiding hand.

The missing link

Marsh Chapel, the cloisters and the gateway towers seem to cry out for the Supreme Stump to fill the void and complete the link between the buildings and its link to the past. The towers would work best as a preliminary pylon announcing the main attraction...

Photo by Martin Clark, geograph.org.uk

...that is especially found wanting on the water, which reflects and extends St. Botolph's sublime soar but mirrors and magnifies the void left by the incompletion of B.U.'s Charles River Campus.

Sert's assertion

Photo courtesy of WBUR's Photostream on Flickr.com

Knocking the campus's semi-symmetry lopsided with typical modernist irreverence for things past is Josep Lluis Sert's B.U. School of Law Tower (1960-65), a token tribute to the Tower-Not-To-Be. This crass, chockablock clustering of disparate parts hulks over the Charles as a concrete (so to speak) symbol of the law-office bureaucracy for which its students are bound.

Which lacks the lithe, lofty leap-and-bound and gracefully unified composition of the Boston Stump. (And the Law Tower is awkward functionally as well as visually: an elevator-linked stackup of classrooms, offices and mock courtrooms doth not a cohesive, collegial community make.)

So the Alexander Graham Bell Memorial Tower reliefs still tower over the heads of Boston University students, professors and alums as they enter into its various schools of thought. These icons serve as grim but gracious reminders of the Boston Stump that stumped its stardom all over the States but forever eluded
its proper namesake, its rightful heir, its sister city.

And yet...

Boston's 'Stump'

Photo by Chen Si-Yuan, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Boston, Mass. is not completely stumpless, boasting a spire-challenged church of
its own: King's Chapel,
the granite Anglican-Unitarian landmark
built 1748-1752 from a Georgian design by Peter Harrison. Fundraising for King's Chapel's completion stumped the congregation, hence its foursquare bell tower bereft of a crown.

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!