Calvary Presbyterian Church | The Old Church

Williams, Warren Heywood (American architect, 1844-1888)

Calvary Presbyterian Church | The Old Church

1882

1422 Southwest 11th Avenue, Portland, Oregon

Style: Gothic Revival

James Barratt, Elizabeth Neal and Katrina Padre, Medieval Portland Capstone Students, Medieval Portland Walking Map Project, Fall 2011

Warren Heywood Williams’s magnificent church is a product of the High Victorian interest in Gothic Revival architecture. As a Carpenter Gothic building, it exhibits many of the dramatic elements most closely associated with Gothic European churches, such as stained glass windows, a dramatic belfry, pointed archways, and buttresses. However, this structure was constructed of wood painted the gray of Gothic stonework. The theme continues into its interior with a splendid rib-vault ceiling rising out of slender, graceful, cast-iron Corinthian columns, all painted to resemble stone. Two remarkable features include the large Povey Brothers stained glass window portraying Matthew 6:28, “Consider the Lilies,” and the porte-cochere (a covered porch for carriages), which was restored in 1983 using basalt paving blocks rescued from Portland’s early city streets. Though the building was originally designed for Calvary Presbyterian’s congregation, it was bought by the Old Church Society, Inc. for the purposes of preservation in 1969. Now it is a non-denominational community space.