St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, built in the Norwegian Gothic style , and possessing some of the finest stained glass windows in the country, is the home of the largest, oldest, and still quite vibrant, Episcopal congregation in Suffolk County. Located at the intersection of Montauk Highway and Route 111 in Islip, the church and the accompanying parish buildings, also reflecting the Scandinavian motif, can be easily found.
The original St. Mark’s Church, a white frame structure, was organized November 15, 1847, under its first rector , Reverend William Everett. In 1879, new parishioners, occupying the then fashionable resorts and estates along the South Shore, decided that the parish should have a new Church, and the original building was sold to St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church and removed to East Islip, where it now forms the nucleus of St. Mary’s Hall.
In 1880, William Kissam Vanderbilt agreed to defray the cost of the new Church if the rest of the congregation financed the rectory. Traveling frequently in Scandinavia, Vanderbilt got his inspiration for a new Church from the eleventh century Norwegian Church near Sogne Fjord. He commissioned Richard Morris Hunt, who had built his home in Idle Hour, in Oakdale, as well as helping to plan the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the base of the Statue of Liberty, to do the design, and artisans were brought from Norway to assist the work.
The new Church, constructed for the sum of $15,892.00, a huge sum for the time, was opened in 1881. It is one of six churches done in the Norwegian Gothic or Norwegian Stave style in the United States, and one of sixty-three worldwide. Projecting, carved gables, exposed framing, and carved timberwork lend St. Mark’s a natural charm and beauty.
The then relatively unknown William Comfort Tiffany, who lived and worked in Queens but regularly attended services at St. Mark’s, obtained the commission from Vanderbilt to design and build the stained glass windows for the new Church. Over the next two decades, Tiffany built nine windows for St. Mark’s, making a gift of one. Angels, lilies, saints, and haloed choirs surround the congregation. These are the first windows ever done by Tiffany that picture people, and the first ever done for a church depicts St. Mark holding a book with a winged lion at his side.
On the night of December 5, 1989, St. Mark’s was destroyed by fire, believed to be the work of an arsonist. Using the original blueprints, the Church has been rebuilt to its former beauty. Parishioners, painstakingly searching through debris after the fire for shards of stained glass, found enough so that restoration experts, using old photographs, were able to restore the windows.
Today St. Mark’s, the elegance of its Church and the spirit of its parishioners, is there for all of us to share.
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This page created by D. Rippert.