March 2005: St. Alban's

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The church at the crossroads

By Lucy Chumbley
Washington Window
Vol. 73, No. 4, March 2005

One hundred and fifty five years ago, a young woman died and a church was born.

The woman was 24-year-old Phoebe Nourse, the granddaughter of a local farmer, and the church was - and is - St. Alban's, Washington, D.C.

Standing in the nave on a recent weekday, local historian and longtime parishioner Ruth Harwood Cline tells the story of how the "church at the crossroads" came to be.

First there was a farm, she said, spread out at the intersection of Woodley and Tenallytown roads (now Wisconsin Avenue).

The farm, Mount Alban, was owned by Phoebe's grandfather, Joseph Nourse. After he died, the land was sold and an Episcopal school was built near where the church stands today.

The Nourse family attended church at St. John's, Georgetown, where Phoebe taught Sunday school and they rented a pew - the custom of the day.

After the school was built the headmaster, the Rev. Ten Broeck, extended an invitation to the neighborhood families to come and worship at the schoolhouse chapel. The Nourses began to attend church at Mount Alban, giving up their pew at St. John's.

When Phoebe died of tuberculosis in 1850, her sisters discovered she had set aside $35 in gold, with the instruction that Broeck use it to start a church at Mount Alban.

Family members and neighborhood families added to the fund, and Broeck obtained the title to a half-acre of the school's land (the school eventually failed). St. Alban's first rector - the Rev. Wentworth L. Childs - was called, and in March 1851, ground was broken. On April 30, 1854, the small wooden church opened its doors, and a year later, on May 24, 1855, it was consecrated.

For the last year, the approximately 1,700 present-day parishioners of St. Alban's have been celebrating the story of their church, which has both changed and remained constant for 150 years.
The sesquicentennial kicked off last April with a reading of the first sermon preached in the church, and will conclude with an April 17 visit from Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold. In the months between, a range of activities and events have ensured this milestone will be a memorable one.

In the summer, parishioners picnicked at "Highlands," the old Nourse farmhouse, which is now part of the Sidwell Friends School. In the fall, they traveled to St. Paul's, Rock Creek, for an Evensong and procession to the family's grave site.

In November, choirs from the four mission churches founded by St. Alban's - St. David's, All Saints, St. Patrick's and St. Columba's - returned to sing at the church.

An anthem was commissioned and performed, and special monthly concerts took place through the year. There was a gala dinner in February; and the parish produced a 20-minute video of its history, "St. Alban's: A Church at the Crossroads." In addition to writing the script for the video, Cline delivered three lectures on the church's history, which are now available on audiotape. She is also working on a book.

A lot of people were really unaware of our history and our role in the area's and the city's history," said Johanna Turner, a St. Alban's parishioner. "I think it made people really proud of where we've been and who we are."

In many ways, St. Alban's has been defined by its location. Positioned at the intersection of Wisconsin and Massachusetts avenues, the church draws people from all walks of life.

"We are at a crossroads at the nation's capital, so we have every spectrum of political opinion," Cline said. "People come from north and west and east and south. We are - we can't escape it - a mission."

The church's prominent position and its open door policy - it was founded as the area's first free church, meaning families did not have to rent a pew in order to attend - has made it a natural haven for those in need.

And right from the beginning it has made a difference in people's lives.

Opening the church's very first ledger, now stored in an acid-free box in the church safe, Cline points to an early example of the church's good work in the community.

An even, copperplate hand lists Priscilla Anne Jones as the first person to be baptized in the schoolhouse chapel that became St. Alban's on Oct. 23, 1853. Jones' name appears again in 1854 in the first group of confirmands, and then, a few pages later, in a final, sad entry. She died Jan. 5, 1855, at age15 and is the church's first recorded death.

Had St. Alban's not been a free church, Cline explains, that young woman and her family might have been denied both membership and comfort.

"The desire of Phoebe Nourse, to have a church where all were welcome, is a theme we've been trying to carry through," Turner said. "We've been a church of welcome and inclusivity."

"Our missionary work still goes on," Cline said. "We are meeting the needs of an awful lot of people."

In the local community, the church has been a meeting place for groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous since 1948. The Op Shop now grosses $100,000 each year to support area homeless ministries, and the "Super Sixties" program for seniors has been going strong since the 1950s. The daycare center, established in 1973, continues to serve the community, and the church has established thriving partnerships with inner city parishes, including St. Philip's, Anacostia.

In addition to its work in the neighborhood and city,St. Alban's ministers to people around the world through various outreach programs.

"One of our goals as a church is that we feel we're called to send 1,700 missionaries into the wider community and that they are the representatives of God," said St. Alban's rector, the Rev. Frank Wade.

A capital fund drive completed this year raised $3.8 million, he said. This money will be divided between the church's Transformation Fund, an initiative that provides backing for the worldwide ministries of St. Alban's, and an expansion project that will open up the church's narthex to create more space for people and programs.

While the narthex will expand, the nave, the heart of the church, is unchanging. Here, the saints still shine down from the magnificent windows, many of which were commissioned by the Rev. Charles T. Warner (rector from 1912-1949) and created by renowned British artist James Hogan. (As well as commissioning the windows, Warner also was responsible for encasing the wooden church in stone.)

Since its inception, St. Alban's influence has rippled out from the crossroads it straddles, Wade said. Today, 10 percent of the membership of the Diocese of Washington worship in St. Alban's or the four churches it started.

Wade recently announced that he will retire after 21 years as St. Alban's rector on April 24, the week after the year-long celebrations conclude.

Times change and people come and go, he said. But much has remained constant in the church's 150-year history.

"I think that being a Christ centered community is the thing that can't change," he said. "I think the church needs to live into the future with the same kind of energy we've used to live into our past.
"I think it's important that St. Alban's lived in each era as part of that era but with an eye to the future and what was better. St. Alban's had an eye to what was different, broader, wider and I think that's a great legacy."

Contact Lucy Chumbley at lchumbley@edow.org

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