A fun new postcard that wandered our way, check it out above! This quaint drawing pictures St. John’s Episcopal Church of Essex, New York.

Can you help us identify the artist who created this drawing as well as the year it was created?

We shared the image on the Essex on Lake Champlain Facebook page and invited our viewers to play some Vintage Essex Trivia, but so far we have only received one helpful bit of information:

Tilly Close: Shown after Persell Hall was added, but before the handicap entrance was built.

Persell Hall is the rectangular extension to the right. Does anyone know what year those additions were made? That will give us a cap on the beginning and end dates that illustration could have been drawn.

A Bit of St. John’s Episcopal Church History

The building that houses St. John’s was originally a schoolhouse (c. 1835) for the Ross family, though it has had additions and alterations since then. Church services were held in the schoolhouse in the early 1800s because there was no proper church for that denomination in Essex. However, in 1854 the building was officially leased to the church, and then in 1877 it was purchased by St. John’s and moved from its location on Ross property to its current location on Church Street.

The church was redesigned with country English Reform Gothic in mind during that transition with added features like the large projecting buttresses constructed for pleasing ascetics and not a structural necessity for that small wooden building. It is a unique and beautiful Essex building.

A fun fact about the small belfry atop the church is that it contains a bell that came from the lake steamer, Champlain, which wrecked sometime in the 1870′s near Westport, NY.

Learn more about the history and architecture of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

You can also visit St. John’s website to learn more about the church.

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