Air-conditioning came to the sanctuary in 1957,
Between 1962 and 1966 the original amber-and-
and none too soon. Until then, parishioners
pearl windows at eye level — which once were
waved funeral fans to stay cool — this, at a time
operable to admit cooling breezes — were
when hats and gloves were the expected attire
replaced with the fixed stained-glass windows
for women and suits and ties for men, whatever
you see today depicting scenes from the life of
the weather. Dean Lawson recalled that the first
Christ. The clerestory windows showing the
time he preached at St. Peter’s (as a guest
Stations of the Cross and the seven sacraments
preacher in the 1940s), “I looked to see several
and the two large windows on the south side of
hundred people or more, and fans going in
St. Mary’s Chapel were installed at the same
every direction. I didn’t know whether the fans
time.
were really for cooling or to protect themselves from what I was going to say.” A huge fan on the south wall of St. Mary’s Chapel that provided air circulation had to be turned off during sermons and anthems. “Sometimes we kids wished it had been left on during the sermon,” observes lifelong member Eric Lang Peterson. Organist Setzer commented, “I used to plead with the ushers not to turn on the fan, especially during the Offertory.” Acolytes would vie for who got to turn the fan on and off.
It was the custom in those days to fast before taking Communion, and on hot summer Sundays, “invariably you’d hear a plop — plop — plop as young people in the choir fainted,” Virginia Rowell recalls. The rector at the time, the Rev. James L. Duncan, finally wrote to choir parents imploring them to feed their children before church. When Virginia’s father, Delmar Webb, the longtime chief usher, died, the family found in the pockets of every one of his jackets the ammonia ampules he used to revive the fallen.
Stained glass windows in the present day nave depicting the scenes of the life of Christ.
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