Church Going

Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe (1764-1820), designer of the United States Capitol, is credited also with “one of the first and finest Gothic revival buildings in the country” (Christopher Weeks), Christ Church on Capitol Hill, completed in 1805 but somewhat altered since, and frequented, once upon a time, by Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and (not frequented but attended by) Jefferson. Five or six blocks towards the Capitol is Saint Mark’s, completed between 1884 and 1894, the work of T. Buckler Ghequiere (1854-1910), the first architect Baltimore considered its own. Here, “Romanesque revival details dwell uneasily within a Gothic revival shell” and stained glass from the studio of Louis Comfort Tiffany adorns the clerestory. Past the House side of the Capitol, St. Peter’s Parish was founded in 1820 as the second Catholic parish in Washington (before the District included Georgetown), but the current church dates from 1890, and whoever designed it would be disappointed that only the exterior walls and stained glass windows were saved from fire in 1940.

There are many churches on Capitol Hill, of course, but these are three I have had occasion to stop and look into, when empty, and, like Larkin, wonder what we will turn them into once they have fallen completely out of use. But also, like Larkin, I am pleased to stand in them, in silence - unnoticed, looking around and, most of all, up:

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

The dead don’t lie around these churches, in Larkin’s meaning, but they might as well. Anyway, I only look up a little while before I look down, because my purpose there is in their basements - which are stripped bare of any architectural intent above to accommodate tea rooms and church business below. It is to their basements I go to surprise the hunger to be more serious, to try and grow wise in.