Love history and architecture? A free lecture by historian Paul Trap Wednesday, Aug. 9 at 7 p.m. will deal with “The Five Little Wood Churches” created by celebrated Michigan architect Gordon W. Lloyd at one of them, All Saints’ Episcopal Church, 252 Grand St., admission free.
Doors will open to the Saugatuck-Douglas History Center and church presentation at 6 p.m. The one-hour program will be available via livestream on YouTube and Facebook. For a link, visit allsaintssaugatuck.org.
Early arrival grants a chance to view All Saints’ Carpenter Gothic wood construction artfully crafted by local shipwrights in 1871-72. The first worship service was the next year. Pews, installed in 1875, were built of local wood and are still there.
Its impressive stained-glass windows, made in Belgium, were installed in 1880. A century later, the church gained listing in the Michigan and National Register of Historic Sites.
Lloyd, a preeminent 19th century church architect, was best known for designing large stone Gothic worship houses in cities across the Midwest.
Soon after the Civil War he was asked to create a small church, St. James on Grosse Ile along the Detroit River, with funds left by a now-free black woman. It was prototype for four more Episcopal mission churches, including All Saints.’
Trap, a retired Grand Haven Public Schools teacher, has written also about railroad history and religious architecture in the Michigan Historical Review and Michigan History Magazine.
The S-D History Center was founded as the Historical Society in 1986 with 70 charter members. The 501c3 nonprofit now has 700 individual, family and corporate members.
Activities are funded by friends’, members’ and grant contributions, including in part from the Michigan Arts and Culture Council, National Endowment for the Arts, Michigan Humanities and National Endowment for the Humanities.
For more information, visit MySDHistory.org.