Talk:St. George's Episcopal Memorial Church

DYK-worthy topic: recycled stained glass from churches bombed in WWII, used in ND Episcopal church completed in 1949

discussion started at User talk:MB, transferred and continued here

Hi there, I haven't been very conversant, and not super-active, for quite a while, and particularly not in DYK area. But the topic of Draft:St. George's Episcopal Memorial Church seems pretty interesting, and I wonder if you'd like to develop it and submit it to DYK, either by yourself or with me too? It is mildly newsworthy/timely for DYK in that the church was just now (October 5, 2021) listed in the NRHP. But the interesting stuff is the windows. The source from around its 75th anniversary details which stained glass window derives from, or at least includes fragments from, which (bombed out) church in Kent, etc. I am hopeful we could link to the specific English churches/parishes whose buildings contributed. I think I saw one window was from 400 a.d. or 800 a.d. or the church was from that time. It is asserted this is only church in the US with windows like this; I have not ever heard of anything like this myself. Not sure if the stained glass designs copy the original churches' designs or not, or if they just include fragments. There is also assertion this is the "first building in the northern U.S. to use pumice concrete", whatever that is. Have a lot of sourcing, though have not found the NRHP registration document for it, but that could be requested, old-style from NPS, and/or found by contacting people in Bismarck, e.g. the named news reporter(s) or the church itself or the Bismarck Historical Society (about to have its annual mtg Nov 10). I would be happy to make those calls if we can't find it online somewhere first. --Doncram (talk) 03:11, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Doncram, here is the form (or at least a preliminary version, but in glancing at it there are two churches in England that "donated" glass. [1]. I don't have a lot of time right now, but can work on it as time permits. MB 04:04, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I just found that too. I could email the author to confirm it is final or obtain the final version. So with the old source from 75th anniversary, there is a lot available. Seems like there are no photos at Commons; it is not in Media related to Churches in Burleigh County, North Dakota at Wikimedia Commons. Thanks for taking a look and responding so quickly. No rush at all. DYK clock has not started as it is in Draftspace. Okay by me if you want to copy it over later and leave edit history behind, by the way. --Doncram (talk) 04:12, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Doncram Done with first pass. Take a look, fix any problems, give feedback, etc. Took some info from the draft nom form, assuming there weren't significant changes made before it was finalized. Took hours of tedious searching to find the links for all the English churches that "donated" glass. Now that I have done that, I'm not sure they will survive - someone else might remove them as overly-detailed???? It looks like the architect is worthy of an article (there is a lot on him in the nom form). There are two links in See also section to things related to the architect - but there isn't really much there to see. Would be nice to expand those articles before we sent this to DYK (and maybe write one on the architect). Help out any way you can. MB 06:50, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Obviously well-researched, well-written by you; you do great work. IMO the biggest remaining need is to assert importance/uniqueness of church in incorporating stained glass from bombed out English churches into the lede, and I just took a shot at adding that. But I don't recall, and I think it needs to be explained, what is symbolized by this. I expect it has to do with expressing solidarity with church-going people of southeast England, who had just suffered. Or something about assertion of strength and longevity and we shall overcome, about sweep and solidarity of Christianity in English empire and English-speaking Christian world, I dunno. Or is it explicitly or implicitly about common sacrifice in our "beating back the Hun" (loosely, as that was a WWI term), overcoming anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-religion Nazism. But what was said at time and later? I think the intended meaning needs to be expressed in the lede, as well as in the stained glass section.

And mentioning in the lede that the churches dated as early as 1100 A.D. would add, and/or how many were thereby represented, would help. Basically what is the most "newsworthy" or significant/unusual like in terms of what would be said in a DYK nomination, should be in the lede. I rather expect you planned to expand the lede along these lines, but were focused properly on developing the well-documented body of the article. But you/we do want readers to be excited to read through the article to get to the stained glass stuff. Not that that is the only subtopic of interest here. The lede should be longer than it is now; this is a significant article with multiple good sections and more of the ideas should be introduced or at least hinted at in the lede, IMHO.

Relatedly, I think the booklet/pamphlet/whatever it should be called, titled "St. George's Episcopal Memorial Church: A Memorial to the Pioneers of the Dakotas, 1873-1949", could/should be explicitly mentioned. Besides being used as a source, its writing and its publication and presumably wide distribution (was it sent to all the English church parishes, by the way?) seem likely of importance, as part and parcel of creating the church and communicating something to England and to the U.S. and everywhere.

I also wonder what acknowledgement/reaction from Kent/southwest England might have been, or what note was taken from any of the churches. Was this understood as a respectful gesture, or could it be just crazy American whatever not sanctioned or recognized at all, or worse actually scorned? If the point was to recognize the bombings / the suffering/damage there, was the point received there? Sorry this may be asking for something difficult to ascertain, but I would think that the local newspapers in England around 1949 or before would have covered the glass collection effort and the building and dedication of the North Dakota church. Basically, whatever was intended, how was the gesture received?

Minor thing: this is an Episcopal church, but it took glass from non-Episcopal churches mainly, I suppose. Did it take any glass from any Episcopal churches? Maybe/probably this is covered in effect by your coverage of the churches, but IIRC you did not comment explicitly about this.

I wonder, will a small see also type note be appropriate in all of the English church articles? The importance of an AD 1000 church in England derives hardly at all from some of its fragments being memorialized in North Dakota. But maybe it can be useful to communicate something about world-wide acknowledgment of the loss of the given church. And in Wikipedia we do include memorial type sections in bio articles, about what schools were named after a person, etc.

I suspect the pumice concrete thing is not really important, and perhaps the claim is not true, as, like for many other assertions of first or oldest surviving or whatever made by NRHP nominations, how would the authors know about all other churches ever constructed in U.S. history (or whatever exactly is in the claim), given that they did not have an internet and a Wikipedia to be able to know things like that. I think your coverage mentioning the assertion but not making much of it is fine. I dunno if pumice concrete should be mentioned in the lede or not; it is not what interests me anyhow.

A minor thing is that I prefer in lede to state this is North Dakota's capital and to drop Burleigh County mention, and i edited to that effect, IMO slightly better for the hopefully wide audience to this article as a DYK item and otherwise. --Doncram (talk) 05:17, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

above transferred from User talk:MB

Doncram, I moved this discussion off my TP as it really belongs here.

1. yes, the lead needs work. I always do the lead last, summarizing the article. Didn't really get to that yet.

2. mentioning the book is reasonable. I have no idea how widely it was distributed, but is says "25 cents" on the cover - so it looks like it was a fundraising opportunity - they had an expensive church to pay for.

3. symbolism of using glass from bombed churches? None that I have found. Somebody collected all the glass in England, and I presume it was used elsewhere too. Finding more about that may answer some questions. But as far as this church, (you may not have seen the most recent paragraph on the import duty), it looks like they saw an ad from the glass studio in England and got a really good price - there is text in the NRHP nom that says the studio was trying to expand to the US, so it doesn't seem that the bomb glass was really that much of a factor. I did find there is a church in Canada with glass fragments from war damaged churches in England - but collected by one Canadian soldier (this is in Cox & Barnard).

4. reaction in England? no idea. Again, was more of the bomb glass used in reconstruction of English churches? probably. So maybe no one cared some got to the US too.

5. was there any glass from Episcopal churches. Don't recall any. I'm not really big on religion, so this doesn't mean much to me. None of the church have Episcopal in their names, so I assume the donors are all Anglican churches, and Episcopal is a "branch" of Anglican - so that is probably the only connection. Speaking of the donor churches - that paragraph is hard to parse. It's in the order of the dedication book, which is in physical order of the windows around the church. Would it present better as a table? Then it could be sorted by date. But that might make it more prominent and more likely for someone to say it doesn't even belong - it could be summarized in a few sentences.

5a. I got the impression that the claims of glass from 1100 should be taken lightly. In the ones built in the 19th century, it's safe to assume the glass is original. But in the oldest ones, who knows when the glass was made. Some of those were rebuilt every few hundred years. I didn't say anything about the age of the glass - just listed the date of the church. The glass may or may not be the same age.

6. see also links in the donor church articles. I think that is a good idea. Those sections don't tend to get a lot of scrutiny, I doubt there would be much objection. By the way, many of those aren't articles, but just redirects to the village article. If I couldn't find an article on the church, I went to the village and the church was usually mentioned there - sometimes in was the infobox photo.

7. I think the nom form has more about pumice concrete - the author was pretty adamant about the "first" claim. I found a link to pumice concrete which says it was used by the Romans. They never made it across the Atlantic, so maybe St. George's is the first.

8. removed county from lead. Sure - I usually don't bother with counties, but you put that there originally and I just left it.

9. I wrote Barton, Kinder and Alderson also. I barely found enough sources to say it is notable, but there are probably a lot more offline in English papers and books I couldn't find.

that is for now. MB 03:34, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

I asked User:Peter I. Vardy at User_talk:Peter_I._Vardy#help_on_1949_English_perspective and they came up with another instance of bombed out church stained glass shards being used, in this case for standalone works of art not immediately created for any specific church, in 2005 Seattle Times article "Bits of glass from bombed churches in WWII get new life in 'Peace Windows'" about glass shards collected in Germany by Army Chaplain Frederick McDonald. I note the article reflects McDonald's anti-war sentiments, including comment about "the bafflement we feel for that great irrationality we call ‘War’". The 2005 article said plans were for the windows' permanent home to be the Presidio of San Francisco's "Spanish mission-style chapel, undergoing a three-year, $3.5 million renovation by the nonprofit Interfaith Center at the Presidio." I don't see any mention of a chapel or this in the Presidio article.

And this item, I am not sure what that is, a "roundel" by Terence Kerr whose image, if not the original, is for sale at Fine Art America? A description there:

Detail, roundel of old glass shards salvaged after German V1 bomb damaged Hawkhurst church, Kent, UK / Hawkhurst, Kent, England, United Kingdom: detail of jumbled fragments of ancient stained glass blown from the windows of the Parish Church of St. Laurence when a German V1 flying bomb exploded in the churchyard in August 1944, towards the end of the Second World War, which were painstakingly salvaged and assembled into a new roundel. / The church also benefited in the 1950s from donations of ancient stained and painted glass from other locations, but St Laurence’s remained closed to the public for 13 years, until 1957, while extensive repairs to the medieval structure were carried out. A twisted fragment of metal shrapnel from the bomb itself is now displayed on a windowsill in the church and the attempts to salvage pieces of the shattered glass are remembered in an inscription.

I see that Parish Church of St. Laurence is a redlink but it is covered at Hawkhurst#Churches.

And User:Hassocks5489 (thanks!) kindly commented there about Cox & Barnard (article they created) and related church in Canada.

Now i am not sure where coverage of this should "live" in Wikipedia, if anywhere besides coverage of North Dakota church, the chapel in the Presidio, the church in Canada (does it have an article?), and perhaps comments at articles about the English and German churches? Hmm, I wonder if a navbox should be created to link to all, and included at all the articles, providing for complete inter-navigation even if there is not a "main" article about the topic. --Doncram (talk) 13:01, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Doncram, article is now live. I expanded the lead, did a more thorough c/e, add a bit about the pamphlet the church published in 1949, added a bit on WWII memorials, added See also links at the English church articles (only the ones that had actual articles, many of the church links are just redirects to villages). I haven't added anything about the symbolism of using the WWII glass since there is nothing in the sources about that. Have not covered anything about using glass in other places either since that really doesn't belong in this article (except in the See also section here). I think I'm done. It would be nice to have a photo. I sent an email to the church saying I was writing this article and asking for someone to release a image but didn't get any response. Do you want to try, you may have better luck.... MB 04:53, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Missing Images of the church and windows - Plea sent to the church ...

I didnt read all the stuff above, but I do think this good article could really shine with some images. I have sent a plea to the church asking of they have a volunteer who could help us and saying that they should leave a message here if they can help. Victuallers (talk) 11:30, 12 January 2022 (UTC)