The Project stays in the ‘burbs to tackle Conshohocken’s St. Mary, situated nicely at the base of the giant hill that is Conshy.
St. Mary initially struck me as something of a smallish Tweener Church. The exterior looks late-model, reinforced by a 1950 cornerstone date. If the pattern held, then, we were surely in for a church with not much going on in the ornamentation department.
Boy, were we wrong.
St. Mary is the perfect example of why a church’s beauty doesn’t begin or end with its exterior, whether it be the St. Cyprian or St. Athanasius Effects.
This is no late-model tweener. Instead, it’s a beautiful, almost opulent columned, cruciform Gothic structure. Turns out that St. Mary was founded as a Polish national parish. A-ha! God bless Polish architects. Even when they build late, they still do it right.
And few church builders in 1950 would have the stones to include such detailed paintwork, murals and stained glass. It’s not to the level of St. Adalbert or St. Laurentius by any means, but for a church built 50 years later, it’s very, very close, and very, very good.
Sure, there are some things that annoy the Project, like the removed altar rail and the hidden organ pipes. But all in all, this is just a really nice building.
Conshohocken has pretty much established itself as the epicenter of suburban church excellence.
Well played.
Size Rating: 8 out of 10
Ornamentation Rating: 9 out of 10
Overall Design Rating: 8.5 out of 10 crosses
