Christ Episcopal Church Weathervane - Raleigh, NC - Unique Weathervanes on Waymarking.com

"The walls of Christ Church exhibit the preponderance of solid over void and minimal use of surface decoration characteristic of the "Early English" Gothic style in which Richard Upjohn designed the building. It is constructed of rough local granite of varied color. All openings are of dressed stone. The red tile roof offers a pleasant contrast to the somber walls. The west front on Wilmington Street features a broad painted-arch portal with simple board and batten double doors. Above it is a narrow lancet window flanked by two shorter ones. The gable roof is terminated by a cruciform finial. At the corners there are angled buttresses rising in two stages with sloping shoulders. The nave to the crossing is three bays long. The bays are divided by perpendicular buttresses of similar design to those at the corners. There is a broad lancet window with deep splayed reveals in each bay, except the one at the western end of the north side. This bay features the side door fron the vestibule to the three-bay arcade connecting the church to the free standing bell tower. This tower has corner butresses; those on the north side are angled, those on the south are parallel projections of the corners. The tower is divided into three sections by simple masonry bands. The first level has a pair of small glazed lancets, the second a larger one, and the third an even larger louvered lancet. The tower is crowned by a solid stone broach spire terminated with a fanciful weathervane. The exterior of the transepts and the sanctuary are treated in the same way as the nave. Christ Church measures approximately 95 feet from east to west and 68 feet from north to south.

Richard Upjohn, architect of Trinity Church in New York, was invited to design the new building in 1843 (while in Raleigh, Upjohn was also asked to design the chapel at St. Mary's Junior College). The construction was carried out by three Raleigh stonemasons, James Puttick, Robert Findlater, and James Martindale. The cornerstone was laid by Bishop Levi S. Ives on December 28, 1848; the building was completed in 1852. In January of 1853, the church was consecrated by Bishop Thomas Atkinson. The granite used for the exterior walls was taken from a nearby quarry. The bell tower was begun in 1859 and completed in 1861.

In 1852 bequest of Dr. Josiah Ogden Watson enabled the vestry to build the tower. It was begun in 1859 and completed in 1861. The grave and graceful spire, resembles the one on St. Mary's in Burlington except that it stands free at Christ Church and is connected by a Galilee porch. Upjohn 1 s broach spires used a continuous transition from the rectangle to the polygon upon it, suppressing the pyramidal masses usual at the corners of a broach and used inward- curving surfaces instead. The tower is crowned by a weather vane in the shape of a rooster symbolizing St. Peter."

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"For unknown reasons (perhaps related to lack of funds following completion of the church itself), work on the detached bell tower that Richard Upjohn’s original plans had called for was not begun until 1859, with funds bequeathed to the Vestry by Dr. Josiah Ogden Watson “for the purpose of building a Steeple or Tower to the new church Edifice.” Senior Warden George Washington Mordecai awarded the contract for construction of the tower to John Whitelaw, a Scottish stonemason. For reasons that are now unclear, Whitelaw turned to a different quarry for the granite used in the tower. The tower stone is a cool grey, thrown into relief by the red stones used to outline the window openings, as compared to the warm tan color of the granite used for the church walls. The tower was completed in February 1861, just two months prior to the firing on Fort Sumter that opened the Civil War. The gilded weathercock at the tower’s peak, a common feature of English country churches, was included in Upjohn’s original design. (Local wags often enjoy repeating the saying that the rooster atop the Christ Church steeple was the only chicken left in Raleigh when General Sherman’s troops withdrew from the capital on April 28-29, 1865.) The tower was equipped with a single bell for more than a century until, in 1985, five bells cast by John Taylor & Company, Bellfounders, of Loughsborough, Leicestershire, were installed on an eight bell frame. Three more bells were added in the early 1990s to complete a full diatonic ring of eight. Changes are regularly rung by members of the parish’s own guild of bellringers and by visiting bands of ringers. The tower’s granite was repointed, strengthened and fully restored in 1995."

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