Architectural Media presents
DREAMING IN TECHNICOLOR
The Stained-Glass Windows of Harry Wright Goodhue™
His position in the American stained-glass canon - a canon roughly 150 years old, in comparison to the 11th- to -14th century cathedral glass of medieval Europe - is extraordinary, indisputable, hard-won.
St. James Church
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania
Film II: Across the Transept
St. James Church
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania
Film III: The Wilkinsburg Tapestries
St. James Church
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania
Film IV: Effigies of the Morning Light
St. James Church
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania
Film V: Self-Portrait in the Garden of Eden
Nearly 80 years after his self-inflicted death, Wright Goodhue - son of stained-glass visionaries, teenage nephew to famed neo-Gothic architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, disciple of former BGG firm partner Ralph Adams Cram - is the subject of renewed study and consideration.
The timing could not be better: Wright's windows are installed in many a threatened sacred monument, particularly in the eastern United States.
This Architectural Media page does not attempt to write a definitive biography of the young genius - that has already been accomplished by the Pittsburgh-based Albert M. Tannler, whose recent expertly researched and written Stained Glass Quarterly article on Wright (posted here for reading; see sidebar) has literally resurrected the artisan and initiated new-found interest, appreciation and stained-glass scholarship.
Instead, Architectural Media has set out to supplement extant textual scholarship by documenting all of Wright's windows through the high-definition moving image. Stained-glass tapestries of this visceral beauty and poetic caliber beg to be captured and transmitted by the lens. Viewers who cannot journey to actual structures glazed with Wright Goodhue windows - be they in Pittsburgh or on the island of Martha's Vineyard - have the opportunity to experience them in a spatial and auditory context.
This special Architectural Media gallery of high-definition color films offers, first, Wright's culminating masterwork at St. James Church in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania; it is part of an ongoing series entitled "Dreaming in Technicolor: The Stained-Glass Windows of Harry Wright Goodhue." Forthcoming films include documentation of his gigantic rose window at Holy Rosary Church in the Homewood section of Pittsburgh; his high transept windows at Princeton Chapel on the Cram/Goodhue/Ferguson-designed campus of Princeton University, in Princeton, New Jersey; his first commission at First Congregational Church of Montclair, in Montclair, New Jersey - a commission gifted to him by his uncle Bertram as the 16-year-old had just lost his father, Harry Eldredge Goodhue, a pioneer in the revival of medieval stained-glass practice; and Sacred Heart Church, in Jersey City, New Jersey, where the 18-year-old Wright, following the death of BGG, broke free from conservative creative constraints - mostly inflicted by his father, mother and uncle - and, with Cram's generous guidance, came into his own as a towering artist.
The St. James films - five in total; posted below - are accompanied by Bach.
Film I: The Jesse Tree
Film II: Across the Transept
Film III: The Wilkinsburg Tapestries
Film IV: Effigies of the Morning Light
Film V: Self-Portrait in the Garden of Eden
St. James Church
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania
Film I: The Jesse Tree
St. James Church
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania
Film II: Across the Transept
St. James Church
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania
Film III: The Wilkinsburg Tapestries
St. James Church
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania
Film IV: Effigies of the Morning Light
St. James Church
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania
Film V: Self-Portrait in the Garden of Eden
COMING SOON TO ARCHITECTURAL MEDIA - IN FULL HIGH-DEFINITION COLOR & SOUND!
Dreaming in Technicolor: The Stained-Glass Windows of Harry Wright Goodhue™ continues with First Congregational Church of Montclair, an extraordinary, oft-overlooked Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue-designed neo-Gothic edifice (1916) located in the mountain-terrained town of Montclair, New Jersey.
The 16-year-old Wright, having recently lost his famous stained-glass artisan father, Harry Eldredge Goodhue, was given this, his first commission (1921), by his uncle Bertram, older brother to the late Harry Eldredge.
Wright, working out of Boston studios, crafted a massive multi-lancet memorial chancel rose window - a technicolor burst of dream-conjured images - and surrounding grissaile windows throughout the crepuscular, Guastavino-tiled, interlacing-vault sanctuary.
The celebrated commission announced the arrival of a major young talent - and the third genius in a line of what would come to be seen as a Goodhue Gothic family trilogy.
Produced by Architectural Media Company. Script, photography and editing by John Gomez
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