Ascension Memorial Episcopal Church on County Street was designed by famed architect James Renwick Jr. (1818-1895) and is considered “American Gothic Revival” in style. Construction began in 1869 and was completed in 1875. Among Renwick’s other accomplishments are the designs of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and St. Bartholomew’s Cathedral in New York City, and the administrative building of the Smithsonian Institute known as “The Castle.”
The Episcopal Protestant Church in Ipswich was organized in 1839, and the new congregation was allowed to share the Methodist Meeting House. When the present Methodist Church was constructed, the old Town hall was moved the short distance to the newly-extended County Street as “Damon Hall,” where the Episcopal congregation met for about a decade.
The following article, written by Beverly Perna, discusses the exterior renovation of the Ascension Church.
Ascension Memorial Church has undergone a transformation. According to Bradford Clark, the Ascension rector, planning for the exterior renovation began two years ago when a surplus of pledges made it possible to attend to needed repairs and cosmetic changes.
Phase 1 of the project was Nichols Hall on the side of the church. It houses the parish hall and the rector’s office. Clark said there was no insulation, and the wood exterior was rotting in spots. When that was completed, it was on to Phase 2 — the church itself. Clark said that with all the decisions that had to be made, the hardest one that took the most effort and deliberation was what color to paint the church. There was even a special Design Advisory Committee formed of artistic talents among the church members to sort through all the possibilities and to make a recommendation of colors.
Parishioner Bryan Townsend, who owns the historic preservation company Terramor, served as the unofficial “clerk of the works” during the project. He said the paint had been peeling from the church’s exterior for some time and had revealed previous layers, mostly of a reddish brown. “After we started sanding and scraping, we found the following colors (in order of appearance):
- Greenish olive
- Grayish greenish lichen
- Reddish brown
- Pale yellow
He said he thought the reddish brown was the longest-lasting color in the church’s history and certainly was an appropriate color for a Gothic revival church, as were the olive and lichen hues. Pale yellow was not. Townsend said they did some research and decided to go with a historically sensitive palette of olive for the body of the church and a rich brown.
“Because the interior of the church has similar color trim, we decided a rich brown on the outside would not only work well to highlight the beautiful trim boards but would also echo the interior treatment,” he said. The olive on the body is somewhat close to bringing the church back to its original color. So, the two colors speak to past colorations of the church and are grounded in research, with one reference relied upon greatly: Century of Color; Exterior Decoration for American Buildings – 1820-1920, by Roger Moss.
Further reading:
- Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony by Thomas Franklin Waters: The Protestant Episcopal Church
- James Renwick (PDF)
- The History and Spirit of Ascension Memorial Church
- The Early History of Ascension Memorial Church
- A Brief History of Ascension Memorial Church
Historic Ipswich 