Portsmouth’s annual Steeple To Steeple church and synagogue tour will be on Saturday, October 3, 2009, starting at 9:00 am. This tour takes you inside seven of Hampton Roads most interesting and beautiful churches as well as the Chevra T'helim synagogue. It starts at St. Paul’s Catholic Church on the corner of Washington and High streets. St. Paul’s stunning German glass from the early years of the twentieth century has just been cleaned as have its many murals and statuary. Other church interiors on the tour are Trinity Church, from 1762, with its six windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany (on his pencil list and so done by him, not Tiffany and Co.), painted windows from the 1850s and Civil War era and rare English White Friars windows; Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, perhaps the oldest black congregation in the nations, with handsome ceiling murals, pews hand hewn by slaves, hiding places on the “underground railroad,” and slave made stained glass and ironwork; St. John’s Church in high Victorian style with what is thought to be the largest window ever made by Tiffany and Company; Monumental Methodist which claims to be the oldest continuously operating Methodist congregation in the South and third oldest in the nation; Chevra Thelim synagogue, recently restored as a museum with a Holocaust Torah; First Presbyterian with two-hundred year old English pews and rare English stenciled glass windows and finally Court Street Baptist which is one of only two Baptist churches in the nation in the Romanesque Revival style - inside its dozens of stained glass windows in gold and pink fill the interior with a golden glow. The tour starts at 9:00 am Saturday, October 3, with lunch (included in the price of the ticket) and ends at 2:30. It is led by three costumed interpreters, among them: Colonel William Crawford, the town’s founder, and the Rev. John Braidfoot, the second rector of the Colonial church. Tickets sell for $20 in advance (limit 100 people). For tickets contact Dean Burgess at (757-393-0973, or at redlion3@juno.com, or send your check to Kiwanis Club of Portsmouth, P. O. Box 126, Portsmouth, VA 23705-0126 (made out to Kiwanis Club of Portsmouth). Tickets in advance are $20 and at the door are $25. The tour starts at Saint Paul’s Catholic Church (518 High Street, corner of Washington Street). All profits go to the HER Shelter for battered women in Portsmouth and other Kiwanis charities. All the churches are handicapped accessible, but please note your special needs in advance.

Dean Burgess
P. O. Box 126, Portsmouth, VA 23705-0126
757-393-0973
redlion3@juno.com
www.deanburgess.com