User:Cdwswim/Immanuel Episcopal Church On the Green

Immanuel Episcopal Church On the Green in New Castle, Delaware was built in 1703.

History
The Building

Immanuel Church was founded in 1689 and was the first parish of the church of England in Delaware. Work on a church building began in 1703, and was completed in 1708. Between 1820 and 1822, William Strickland, an American architect of the early 19th century, directed an expansion of the building. This expansion included the addition of the bell tower and transepts that extended to half their present length. The pulpit and altar were relocated to their current location and the chancel was set off by a curved altar rail identical to the one in place today.

Starting in the late 1850s, the church underwent changes to reflect Victorian tastes. In 1900 Laussatt Rogers, a local architect and a member of the parish, began replacing the Victorian architectural elements in the church with architectural features in the Colonial Revival style. These modifications were based on an idealized twentieth century of what a colonial church should look like, but did not accurately reflect the way that Immanuel church had ever actually appeared.

The church was devastated by a fire on February 1, 1980 and the building was very badly damaged.

The restoration of the church was modeled on William Strickland's 1820 design. The rebuilding of Immanuel Church was completed in December 1982. Strickland's design for Immanuel repeatedly utilized the quarter circle seen in the bowed front of the choir loft and the rounded corners at the intersections of the nave and transept aisles. A second design theme of the Strickland period were round-headed openings, as our found in the round-headed windows behind the altar. This motif may have also been used in response to the shape of the 1703 nave windows.

The present day sanctuary design is not a true period restoration, but is an integration of historically appropriate architectural details as they apply to current functional and liturgical needs.

The Bells

A distinctive feature of the Immanuel Church is its Change ringing bells. Immanuel possesses one of fewer that forty sets of change ringing bells throughout the United States and Canada. The original ring of six change ringing bells was cast in 1972 and 1973, and recast in 1982.

The Organ

The organ is a twenty-one rank pipe organ made by the Austin Organ Company and was installed on November 1982.