Like Chicago as a whole, the latter half of the 19^th Century was an incredibly energetic and bountiful time for St. James. Located in a prestigious neighborhood and continuing as the parish for much of the city’s business and civic elite, St. James remained one of the largest and most influential churches in the city. Rectors and other clergymen came and went with regularity, but the involvement of many of the city’s most prominent business, civic, and social leaders gave the church a social prominence and influence felt well beyond its walls.

Late 19^th-Century Chicago was a burgeoning metropolis. As the city grew in economic might, the St. James congregation reflected the city’s increasing wealth and sophistication. Wealthy parishioners and other Chicagoans were enriched by booming factories, meatpacking plants, and other enterprises staffed with the immigrant labor flooding into the city. They competed in building ever grander homes, collecting the finest art, and throwing elegant parties in the style of what became known as the Gilded Age.

Though St. James always maintained a solid membership base of middle-class businessmen, doctors, lawyers and their families, the church became even more of a home base for Chicago’s social elite. Newspapers of the time were full of stories about the social activities of prominent parishioners, and the resulting attention helped the congregation become even more well known.

One important way this newly lavish lifestyle benefited the parish was through an outpouring of continual “improvements” to the building and a variety of decorative memorials. One familiar example is the Paul Popp Memorial Font from 1874. It was carved in Rome from Cararra marble by American sculptor, Augusta Freeman, at a time when women sculptors were uncommon. Still used for baptisms, the Popp Font greets everyone who enters the Cathedral.

However, despite the widespread preoccupation with making and spending money, many St. James members also took the lead in recognizing and addressing the needs of less-fortunate Chicagoans.

Every year, thousands of people flocked to Chicago for work, not only from throughout the United States but also from abroad. As years unfolded, and despite the overall dramatic growth in the economy and per-capita wealth, the number of adults and children affected by poverty, disease, and neglect exploded. Many lived in abysmal housing, with inadequate sanitation and practically nonexistent schooling. At the same time, they worked long hours for very low wages, and were easily exploited by unscrupulous employers who skirted or even ignored the minimal labor-rights laws of the time.

The people of St. James were well aware of the plight of so many of their fellow citizens, and members of the parish were active in many charities serving the needs of the disadvantaged. The women of St. James took the lead in sponsoring activities and fundraising events, working directly with families in need, especially children and working mothers. As was typical of the time, the men of St. James got involved as officers and directors of many Chicago philanthropic organizations of the time. However, although the men often devoted long hours to civic service, they left the hard work of direct service to their wives and daughters.

As St. James grew, the missions it sponsored in farther-flung areas of the city grew into independent congregations, making St. James the “mother church” for Chicago Episcopalians as well. Of the “downtown” parishes, Trinity on the Near South Side and Grace in the South Loop originated as St. James missions, and the parishes of The Ascension on LaSalle Street and St. Chrysostom on Dearborn Parkway grew out of St. James as well.

Aside from the expansion of the city and its population, several other factors contributed to the creation of new parishes. The increasing presence of “Anglo-Catholic” liturgical ideas and practices fostered by the Oxford Movement gave rise to controversy throughout the Episcopal Church of the day, and St. James was not immune to the discord. “Innovations” such as vesting choir-members in robes or processing behind a cross were alternately praised and condemned even in the secular newspapers which eagerly followed the story, especially at St. James. The parish records hold many accounts of arguments that reflected a strong anti-Catholic bias as well as the deeply conservative attitudes of those who preferred not to “alter the Church they had grown up with!” But the temper of the congregation was changing, in line with much of the Diocese and the national church.

At the same time, the sheer size and wealth of its congregation was both a blessing and a challenge for St. James. Since the operating budgets were funded by the customary annual pew-rental fees, its members developed very strong notions of ownership about the parish’s direction, as well as their own literal seats. Election to the vestry was controlled by a small group of the most illustrious male members, and social mobility and involvement within the congregation was similarly controlled, among both men and women. The congregation had developed a strongly upper-middle class identity, which remained both an asset and a challenge as the years unfolded.

In fact, like the entire nation, the Episcopal Church was beginning a long process of change. So, too, was St. James. Fundamental changes in American political life, civil society, and general cultural attitudes were soon to explode everywhere, including Chicago.

Chicago celebrated the high-water mark of its renaissance and renewal in the Columbian Exposition of 1892. Civic leaders and laborers worked night and day to create the attractions and buildings of the “White City” in what is now Jackson Park. St. James parishioners were among the leaders of the efforts to wow the world with what Chicago could do. The excitement of the Exposition and the prosperity it displayed reflected Chicago’s sophistication and economic might to the world. But like the quickly vanishing buildings of the White City, great and often sudden change in Chicago was soon evident.

One of the most pressing challenges for St. James was the transient nature of Chicago’s most elite neighborhoods. In the roughly 100 years from its founding till the Great Depression, wealthy Chicagoans built grand homes in a number of areas throughout the city, ranging from the Near West Side and Prairie Avenue to the Gold Coast and the neighborhood around St. James. As the status of neighborhoods rose and fell, so did the memberships of many congregations. Since it was one of the oldest and most prominent congregations, St. James retained the affections of many, helping it to endure the changing trends. However, once the development of commuter rail lines and the subsequent explosion of suburbia began, the impact on the historic neighborhoods and their churches was tremendous.

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1890s interior of the building built after the Great Fire, to which the current interior was restored in the 1980s.

The Popp Memorial Font

 

Looking north on Wabash Avenue from the corner of Wabash and Erie where the Nickerson mansion still stands. (Photo courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society)

The parish house and rectory were built in 1892 and served St. James until 1967 when it was replaced by the current 65 East Huron building.

The Choir of Men and Boys in the 1890s