(You will often find the beautiful church listed at 1519 Myrtle. City officials
changed the name of Myrtle to
honor the Detroit resident who played an important role in the Civil Rights
Revolution)
James E. Scripps was born in London in 1835. His family migrated
to the United States with him in 1844 and settled in Rushville, Illinois. With
only a country
school education, James Scripps moved to Chicago where he worked for a newspaper
and then, in 1859 when he was 24, moved to Detroit to work as a reporter
and writer for the Detroit Tribune. As Detroit's population grew in
the early stages of industrialization, he realized that the growing blue-collar
working
class would buy a newspaper targeted to them and focused specifically on their
interests. He became an entrepreneur and, on August 23, 1873 began publishing
the Detroit Evening News, a newspaper that is still published in Detroit,
but is now known as the Detroit News. His critics bemoaned the minimum
intellectual content of his newspaper and its many advertisements for low-cost
products,
but Mr. Scripps sold numerous copies and prospered. Along with his younger
half-brother, E. W. Scripps, James Scripps held financial interests in newspapers
in Cincinnati, Chicago, Cleveland, and St. Louis, as well as Detroit. By 1881,
James Scripps was a very rich man in the booming industrial Detroit.
Somewhere in his career, he developed a strong interest in classical art and
architecture. He toured Europe in the early 1880s, examining classical painting
and purchasing some of them for his own collection. He was one of the founders
of the Detroit Museum of Art. Indeed, he gave $50,000 to fund the Detroit Museum
of Art, the organization that later became the Detroit
Institute of Art. In
1899, he gave the Detroit Museum of Art their first collection of the paintings
of the European masters. James Scripps' sister and financial partner, Ellen
Scripps was the founding donor of the now very well known Scripps Institute
of Oceanography in LaJolla, California.
Epiphany Reformed Episcopal parish was founded in Detroit in 1878 to serve
Anglicans who did not pledge themselves to the Episcopal bishop of Michigan.
This congregation built a small frame church in 1880 and then changed their
name to Trinity Episcopal in 1889. James E. Scripps was a member of that parish.
He traveled in his native country and admired the architecture he found there.
Since he had sufficient funds
to build a church for his congregation, he selected the architectural style.
He commissioned an English architect to tour southern England to sketch the
best of the early Gothic churches—a style he clearly preferred. He then
asked the Detroit firm of George Mason and Zacharias Rice to build the church
you see at the southeast corner of Martin Luther King (Myrtle) and Trumbull.
You will find, in Detroit, quite a few elegant gothic churches built from the
later 19th Century until the start of the Depression. This one is distinctive
since it is among the first classically Gothic church built in the United States.
It has a traditional cruciform using coarse rock faced white Trenton limestone
for the solid masonry walls. The smooth brown limestone used extensively for
trim attractively offsets this coarse white limestone. It is basilican in plan;
that is, borrowing from the Roman style, it has a nave, two aisles and an apse
at the end of the nave. Note that there is also a massive tower at the cross
of the arms of the cruciform. Large buttresses and stone gothic arches support
this central tower. The fenestration is symmetrical using lancet arched stone
window casings with stone hoods. The tracery—the stone vaults that divide
the large windows—is architecturally correct. Mr. Scripps did not spare
a penny when it came to stone carving for this magnificent church. In the interior,
ten angels carved from Bedford limestone support the nave beams. In this interior,
you will also see massive pillars in the Norman Gothic style. There are more
than 200 stone carving in this church. There are carved stone gargoyle rainwater
leaders and the impressive crenellated parapet walls along the roof making
this church different from others in Detroit. The stained glass channel window
shows the baptism of Christ and was done by the Mayer Company of Munich. The
stained glass window in the east aisle is a memorial to William Scott while
the west aisle window picture Christ as the Good Sheppard. These were done
by the Tiffany Glass Company of New York. The organ is a 1200 pipe tracker
made by the Jardine Company, also of New York.
The uniqueness of this church may be appreciated by comparing it to some of
the impressive churches built earlier in Detroit such as St.
John's Episcopal at Woodward and Vernor, Sts.
Peter and Paul on East Jefferson, and the Church
of the Messiah on East Grand Boulevard. Then you might contrast Trinity Episcopal
to some of the impressive churches erected in Detroit after the Gothic ideal
became popular such as St. Paul's Cathedral at Woodward and Hancock, Most
Blessed Sacrament Cathedral at Woodward and Belmont or Ralph Cram’s St.
Florian in Hamtramck.
In 1896, members of the Trinity Episcopal congregation voted to unite their
parish with the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan. In addition to the church, there
is a Late Gothic Revival parish house constructed from sandstone ashlar in
1925. This building includes a chapel, gymnasium, offices and classrooms. This
is known as the Wilson Parish Hall, named in honor of Reverend Wilson who served
as rector.
Faith Memorial Lutheran was a parish established nearby at the corner of Trumbull
and Alexandrine in 1956 to serve the residents of the Jefferies Housing Project.
From the perspective of 2006, it seems odd to think that a Lutheran Synod would
create a parish to serve the residents of a massive set of high rise buildings.
However, public housing did not have such a strong negative stigma since it
served the needs of low-income families who later moved into their own homes.
The federal government built the Brewster Project near
downtown on the east side of Woodward to provide housing for Detroit blacks.
Later, they built the
Jefferies Project near downtown on the west side of Woodward to provide housing
for whites. By the 1960s, however, these huge high-rise projects in many cities,
including Detroit, provided housing almost exclusively for blacks, primarily
families headed by women. Not long after the establishment of Faith Memorial
Lutheran, the racial composition of the Jefferies Project changed.
By the 1980s, urban planners recognized the folly of concentrating impoverished
black, female-headed families in high-rise public housing projects. Beginning
in the first Bush Administration and continuing into the Clinton Administration,
federal funds became available to raze the high-rise public housing projects
and replace them with alternatives, including low-rise, suburban-like housing
and rent vouchers. By 2001 or so, almost all residents had moved away from
the Jefferies Homes and so the clientele for Faith Memorial was gone. In the
1990s, Faith Memorial and Trinity Episcopal began discussions about a merger.
In 2006, the congregations of the two parishes started to worship together
at Trinity calling their new congregation the Spirit of Hope. This parish is
now affiliated with both the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan and the Southeast
Michigan Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran in America.
Architects: George Mason and Zachariah Rice
Date of Construction: 1893
Architectural Style: Fourteenth Century English Gothic
Website: http://spiritofhopedetroit.org/index.html
National Register of Historic Sites: Building #80001929, Listed: May 22, 1980.
State Register of Historic Sites: Listed August 3, 1979
State of Michigan Historical Marker: I believe that none has been erected.
City of Detroit Local Historic District: The interior of this beautiful church
was designated a City of Detroit Local Historic District on March 12, 1979.
Use in 2007: Church
Photo: Ren Farley, July, 2003
Description prepared: October, 2007
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