Saint Andrew's Hall

St. Andrew's Memorial Church is significant for two reasons. First, the church was designed by the Boston-based firm of Cram, Wentworth & Goodhue. In the early 20th century, Ralph Adams Cram became the leading advocate and authority in the United States on Gothic architecture.

Nationally prominent Cram and Goodhue structures include St. Thomas' Church (1906) in New York City, St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral (1908-11) in Detroit, and buildings at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Cram's beliefs and designs influenced a generation of church architects. What makes St. Andrew's Church important is that it is one of the earliest of Cram's churches. The plans for St.

Andrew's date back to the early 1890s, although the church was not completed until 1902. It is certainly the oldest of five Cram churches in the Detroit/Windsor area and represents the innovative experimental phase of Cram's work. It also embodies his philosophical ponderings concerning the Perpendicular Gothic as the most suitable vehicle for capturing the solid traditions of the Medieval English Church during a practical and utilitarian age. St.

Andrew's is important, secondly, as a religious body. Organized as a mission in 1885, then admitted into the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan as an incorporated parish in 1889, St. Andrew's was one of the earliest religious institutions established in the University-Cultural Center (UCC). Since the first residential settlement of the UCC in the late 19th century, St.

Andrew's has had an involved and continuous relationship with the changing community around it. The parish of St. Andrew's is also important as a symbol of the missionary expansion of the Episcopal Church in Michigan during the 1870s-1880s. Indeed, St.

Andrew's is a memorial church dedicated to Samuel Smith Harris, the second Bishop of Michigan (1879-88), who actively promoted the Church during his brief tenure. Lastly, significant individuals have been associated with St. Andrew's Church--not only Bishop Harris, but also such important benefactors as Fred Wardell (founder of Eureka Vacuum Cleaner Company and developer of the Wardell Apartments [Park Shelton] at the corner of Woodward and E. Kirby), and Ivan Luddington (founder of Luddington News Company).

St. Andrew's Memorial Episcopal Church was completed in 1902 from plans drawn in the early 1890s by the Boston-based architectural firm of Cram, Wentworth & Goodhue. The architecture of St. Andrew's represents Ralph Adams Cram's fascination with the Perpendicular style of English Gothic church architecture that flourished from the mid-14th through the 15th century.

Like the Perpendicular, Cram's St. Andrew's displays characteristic, straight, vertical and horizontal lines; slender, vertically subdivided support buttresses; rows of massive columns in the nave; minimal decorative stonework; and only modest amounts of tracery at the head of windows. The original church building of 1902-1906 emerged from drawings submitted to the parish of St. Andrew's around 1894.

At the corner of Fourth and Putnam, ground was broken for the new church on St. Andrew's Day (November 30th) in 1894. The cornerstone was laid either in 1898 or 1900, and the church was dedicated on November 7, 1902.