King’s Chapel

I had the chance to visit Boston about a month ago, and wandered into King’s Chapel, a Unitarian church near Boston Common built in 1754.  It’s an odd little creature, but few of us would regard the classic building as second rate.  Even so, one of the placards on the self-guided tour read:

Quarrymaster Ralph Allen of Bath, England, offered King’s Chapel enough stone for the columns and decoration of the church, but the parishioners couldn’t afford the shipping costs or pay for the skilled masons necessary to do the work.

Instead, they carved wood columns from domestic forests.  I can imagine the discussion as a stone-column advocate insisted that the only way to properly honor God was to cough up the money for the stone columns.  “Solomon’s Temple had stone columns, so stone is the obvious choice for any Bible-believing church.”

Pleas to the king and the Anglican bishops for money to build the church were never answered, and the parishioners were never able to finish the ambitious design….

Who knew?  When we moderns come across magnificent wood colonnades, we’re less likely to wonder where the stone went than to complain because we can’t afford the wood.