The spire of Saint Mark’s Church climbs two hundred feet above Locust Street, a sharp limestone needle designed in the English Gothic style. When construction finished in eighteen fifty-one, the parish intended to create an authentic replica of a rural English village church in the center of Philadelphia. Rector Thomas Clay drank heavily and allegedly vanished into the city’s taverns, leaving his congregation to fund the lavish stone carvings and stained glass while he remained absent from the very pews he commissioned.
Saint Mark's Church
religious