Monastery in Mendham

by | Nov 21, 2024 | Community of St. John Baptist

In 2024 the Community of St. John Baptist (CSJB) celebrated 150 years of ministry in the United States. As part of the festivities, on September 28 the Sisters hosted “Monastery in Mendham.” The Convent was opened to the public for tours of this historically significant, 1915 French Eclectic architectural treasure. Volunteers and Sisters led groups through the parlor, sitting room, refectory, chapel, church workroom, library, chapter room, and main chapel, and shared the rich history of this place. Guests were also treated to an exhibit of their extensive collection of historical vestments and embroidered treasures. After the tour, guests were invited to bring a small item to an appraiser in the retreat house. The booklet prepared for the event is republished here.

Community of St. John Baptist

The Journey from Clewer, England, to New York City, to Mendham

The Sisters of St. John Baptist, an Anglican order founded in Clewer, England, in 1852, established an American Chapter in 1875 when Sr. Helen Margaret, born Helen Stuyvesant Folsom, returned to her native New York. Her family generously donated land for the building of St. John Baptist Convent on 17th Street. The Sisters devoted themselves to Holy Cross Mission, which helped struggling German immigrants. They also began a college preparatory program for young women, held first at the Convent and then in the newly built St. John Baptist School next door.

CSJB Mother House Clewer, England in the 1880s

St. John Baptist House 233 E. 17th Street on Stuyvesant Square, New York, between 1877 and 1880

A year later, in 1881, a fresh-air summer house was opened in Farmingdale, Long Island. Called St. Anna’s Cottage, it provided much-needed respite for women and children from the city for the next 18 years. The last summer there would be in 1899 when it ceased operation due to rising costs and a typhoid outbreak. The closing of the Farmingdale cottage spurred the Community’s first foray into Mendham, when St. Anna’s Cottage was moved to a farmhouse on a ten-acre property in the Township. Land was also purchased to build St. Marguerite’s Home (today St. Marguerite’s Retreat House), which operated from 1908 to 1946. Designed by James Layng Mills and John Cameron Greenleaf, its Tudor/Jacobean Revival style made it feel more like a country house than an institution for children, aged 2 to 18. By 1912 the Sisters decided to relocate their Community to Mendham and plans were made for a Convent on the same property as the Home. In 1928, a new St. John Baptist School was built nearby and it operated until 1983. For the Convent design, the Sisters turned to Harvard-trained architect William Wade Cordingley, and to Durr Friedley, head of the Decorative Arts Department at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Cordingley would later become mayor of Mendham Borough (1935-36 and 1941-42) and first president of the Ralston Historical Association, founded in 1964. A third member of the architectural team, whose name does not appear on any plans, renderings or plaques, was Sr. Frances Maude (née Maude McKee). McKee came from a wealthy Philadelphia family and after her mother’s death traveled extensively through Europe. When she entered the Sisterhood in 1893, she brought along her collection of art books and a love of architecture. From the Community Archives we know she “was responsible more than any other person for the convent’s impressive appearance. She poured her family inheritance and years of medieval study into the project, working closely with the architects.”
The proposed scheme of the Convent, illustrated here by Durr Friedley, was quite elaborate, designed as a quadrangle with a large chapel at the east end and a cloistered courtyard. The existing St. Marguerite’s Home would have been expanded, and there was even a large public church proposed. Due to a lack of funding, however, this vision was never realized. Only one portion of the originally planned large complex was ever built, shown in the 1950s aerial view.
The current U-shaped building has three wings. The central ten-bay portion comprises the living quarters, flanked by the south and north wings. The south wing, with four bays, served as the St. Anna Home for Girls from 1915 to 1946. It now contains the refectory, sitting room, small chapel and church workroom, kitchen and other facilities. The north wing, with five bays, would have been as tall as the south wing and was meant to contain the Main Chapel. However, since funding ran out during WWI, the only portion ever completed was the undercroft chapel on the lower level. It serves to this day as the main chapel for services and special occasions, such as Commemoration Day. At one end of this wing there is the bell tower. At the other apse end is the beautiful Lady Chapel, pictured here. This Chapel’s gothic design hints at how grand the Main Chapel might have been.
The exterior surface of the Convent is stipple-textured stucco. The main section and south wing have tall, deeply pitched roofs of reddish-brown English tile. The flat roof of the chapel section had a lower brown asphalt gable roof constructed over it in 1972. Visible on the back facades are several chimneys with multiple diamond-shaped brick chimney stacks that rise from the massive stucco. The front of the Convent is wrapped with an arcade of pointed arches on buttress piers, with a recessed walkway of undecorated groined vaults, four curving surfaces that meet in the middle to form an X. The exterior doors to the main entry and the chapel are solid unpainted oak, set within untrimmed doorways, with simple wrought iron hardware. Secondary doors are constructed of simple tongue and groove vertical boards. The windows of the various interior spaces are distinctive. Within the arcade are small leaded glass windows placed just above eye level for privacy. Above the arcade and just below the eave is a row of tall, narrow windows to light the bedrooms. On the roof, two rows of three-sided hipped dormers illuminate another floor of bedrooms and an attic. Public rooms on the first floor have leaded glass windows grouped in various ways. The Chapter Room, or formal meeting room, is illuminated by four tall lancet windows with a sharp-pointed arch at the top. The Lady Chapel also has thinner, tall lancet windows, with two small stained glass lancet windows. The windows of the undercroft chapel are very plain, with painted wood muntins, slats that hold panes of glass in place. These were always meant to be temporary and have never been replaced.

Entrance and Parlor

Here in our entrance hall, you will see illuminations that were designed and painted by CSJB Sisters from the 19th and early 20th century. Until only recently, all Sisters were trained in calligraphy. These are only some of the many beautiful treasures that were made since our American Community was established in 1874. The Community of St. John Baptist was founded in England in 1852, and by the turn of the 19th century had over 45 branch houses. Our Sisters in England, India, and Wales were also trained in calligraphy and embroidery. Just inside the front entrance we enter the Parlor, which retains its original purpose since 1915 – to greet guests and hold meetings. Many different church groups and classes have met here in the last 109 years. Our Nun Better Shop in the parlor contains handmade jewelry and devotional items made by our Sisters. One section of the Shop has items crafted by the children at the Good Shepherd Home in Cameroon, as well as information on the ministry there. Our Sisters helped Sister Jane Mankaa to establish the Home in 2003, and it is still going strong.

Sitting Room

This sitting room was originally the refectory, or dining room, for the Sisters. It served that purpose until as recently as 2005, when the Sisters’ refectory was relocated to the large room that you will be seeing next. The artwork above the wooden table is a copy of the Ghent Altarpiece in Belgium, which was painted in the 15th century by brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck. This copy was probably made in the mid-to-late 19th century. The illuminated script along the top of the walls was made by CSJB Sisters. It is a passage from the 40th chapter of Isaiah, which says, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” A vast majority of the furniture, rugs, artworks, and decorative objects in the Convent were donated, and the building of this Convent was made possible by a legacy left to the Sisters in the early 1900s.

Refectory

This room now serves as the refectory, or dining room, for Sisters and guests.  When the Sisters first moved into the Convent in 1915, this was part of an entire wing of the building that was dedicated to St. Anna’s Home for Girls. St. Anna’s was a place for teenage girls who were either without family or could not live at home for various reasons. It operated here in the Convent until 1943. This room served as the girls’ refectory, with food prepared in the kitchen below brought up through the dumbwaiter, as it is today. There was a classroom floor above this where they took high school courses and also learned job skills that would help them to become laundresses, seamstresses, or embroiderers. The top two floor were their dormitories.

From its beginning in 1852, the CSJB Community was dedicated to providing an education and job skills to the poor. It operated schools, orphanages, hospitals, and many other institutions to help people of all ages improve their lives and rise from poverty.

St. Michael’s Chapel

This chapel is where the Sisters of CSJB meet six times a day to pray, every day of the week except Monday, which is the Sisters’ day off. The recitation of the psalms, prayers, and hymns at various times of day is called the Divine Office because it is the primary work – or office – of convents and monasteries. Everything the Community does is centered on a life of prayer. The altar of carved oak and the reredos, the ornamental screen which covers the wall behind it, were originally made for St. Andrew’s Convalescent Hospital in New York City, which the Sisters of CSJB founded in 1886 to provide medical care for the poor. When the hospital closed in 1949, the altar was brought to Mendham and then incorporated into the design of this chapel in 1960. The statues are of St. Mary and St. John the Baptist, our patron Saint. This chapel space originally had pews in the back and wooden choir stalls, but just a few years ago the Sisters raised money for more comfortable seats and better prayer desks. The room is now a more flexible space since the chairs can easily be rearranged. This floor was originally used for St. Anna’s classrooms and dormitories, depending on the need, with metal lockers out in the hallway for the girls’ belongings. The hallway outside the chapel now holds the harmonium, which was made in 1906. This instrument is similar to an organ, with bellows underneath which force air through the reeds. It is still played on Sundays and on major feast days. The harmonium may have been in the chapel at St. Michael’s Home for teenage girls in Mamaroneck, New York, which was run by the Sisters from 1886 to 1938.

Church Workroom

For religious Sisterhoods such as the Community of St. John Baptist, the establishment of the Church Workroom within their convent became an important way to financially support their mission to provide spiritual, educational and practical training for the women and girls under their care. It also resulted in the production of some of the finest examples of ecclesiastical embroidery seen since the Medieval era. Pages from the CSJB Workroom account book from the 1880’s have orders being shipped all over the United States. The Sisters sold not only finished vestments and paraments, or ornamental hangings, but also ecclesiastical supplies such as patterns, fabric, thread and notions. Contemporary advertisements emphasize their selling only the finest “English materials and colors.” In 1915 the Sisters of St. John Baptist settled into their new convent in Mendham, NJ. Original architectural plans show the Convent’s Church Workroom occupying most of the third-floor attic space, but at some point it was changed to its present location. The Community continued as they had done in NYC to make and sell vestments and altar linens, as well as illuminations. However, in the 1920’s they expanded their business into making girls’ dresses, doll wardrobes, and finely smocked children’s clothing. They hired local women to help with this work and paid them per piece. These women also helped them with the construction of larger vestments such as copes and frontals, but it was still the Sisters who did most of the fine embroidery.
A commemorative pamphlet published in 1924 devotes an entire chapter to The Church Art Room for Ecclesiastical Embroidery and Illuminating.  It describes “…modern embroidery in the old tints and dyes worked out with ancient stitches [that] displays excellent skill.”  The large cope cabinet on the wall was installed around 1927.
Today the Community of St. John Baptist continues to maintain their extraordinary collection of vestments, embroideries, and archival materials within the Church Workroom and Main Chapel sacristy, hosting public tours and programs by appointment.

Library

This two-story library features a vaulted ceiling, a wall of windows overlooking the Convent garden and raised narrow galleries along three walls. It contains thousands of volumes and it is used regularly by Sisters and seminarians for research. Some of the little books are treasures of illumination created by the Sisters in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The top level of this library contains many books written during the Oxford Movement in the Church of England in the mid-1800’s. The Oxford Movement was begun by clergy in England to bring pre-Reformation devotional practices back to the church. These included the wearing of vestments, using candles on the altar, stained glass, and many other things that had been subtracted from churches during the Reformation in the 16th century. One of the practices that was brought back into the church was religious orders, which had been banned in England, Ireland, and Wales by Henry VIII in the English Reformation. The Community of St. John Baptist was founded in 1852 in Clewer, England. Above the fireplace are two portraits of our co-founders, Mother Foundress Harriet Monsell and Canon Thomas Thelluson Carter. The chairs are arranged in a circle for the Sisters’ meeting every evening for Recreation. Recreation is an ancient practice in religious communities where sisters or brothers meet on a daily basis to share fellowship. It helps to bond the Community together. In modern times this would be called “team-building.”

Chapter Room

This room is known as the Chapter Room, an ancient term in monasteries and convents. It literally means the room where a chapter from the Community’s Rule of Life, or spiritual and practical framework for monastic life, is read each day. Up until 1960, this was the room where the Sisters met each morning after prayers in the Main Chapel. The Sisters sat in these choir stalls and listened to the reading of the Rule, then apologized for any infractions of the Rule and were forgiven. The Sisters still do this every day, but it takes place in the Library after prayers in St. Michael’s Chapel. This room also served as the meeting room for the Annual Chapter, another ancient monastic tradition in which all the Sisters meet and vote on important issues. These meetings were moved upstairs to the parlor in the last few years to accommodate Sisters who have trouble navigating all the stairs. Two of the paintings in this room were done by Sr. Agnes Maria’s brother, who was an accomplished artist. Sr. Agnes Maria was professed at the Community of St. John Baptist House in New York City in 1896, and she served in many ministries throughout her life in the Community.
Most of the paintings in this room are copies of Old Masters. They are not reproductions, which are made by machines, but rather copies that were hand-painted by skilled artists. This large one of St. John the Baptist as a child is a copy of a 17th century work by the Spanish artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. The original hangs in the Kunst Museum in Vienna. The copies of Old Masters paintings throughout the Convent were donated to the Community over the years, and most were painted in Italy in the late 19th century, including the small copy of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation which hangs over the door to the Main Chapel.

Main Chapel

The Main Chapel, like the rest of the Convent, was built in the French Eclectic style. It is based on the design of medieval churches, with a nave where the congregation sits, a rood screen, the choir where the Sisters and clergy sit, then the sanctuary, or sacred space, around the altar where the Eucharist is celebrated. This beautiful space has been our “temporary” chapel for 109 years, which is why the windows are plain and none of the choir stalls are bolted to the floor. We still hope that someday our beautiful Gothic chapel will be built above this floor, as originally planned in 1913. Our sanctuary has a beautiful altar and reredos that were originally bought by Sister Helen Margaret in Germany for the New York City Mother House, completed in the 1870’s. These were made in either Bavaria or the Austrian Tyrol and are thought to be from the 16th century. The original tabernacle was replaced by the current one, which was designed and painted by Sister Olive Francis. The original tabernacle is now in St. Michael’s Chapel and serves as our Altar of Repose on Maundy Thursday. Until 1950, the Sisters of CSJB said six divine offices in the choir area every day, and also received daily communion at a service celebrated by their Community chaplain. Now this space is used for big events such as Commemoration Day, and first and final profession, or taking of vows, ceremonies. Because of its outstanding acoustics, it is also used for concerts and opera performances.
The brass plaque on the floor does not mark a grave. It is simply a memorial to our American Sister Foundress, Sister Helen Margaret, whose family provided the funds and the property to establish our Community in America. She was part of the Stuyvesant family, and had a great desire to help the poor German immigrants on the Lower East Side of New York, where her family owned many properties. While our Sisters were in New York, they founded Holy Cross Church on 4th St. and Avenue C. This plaque was originally on the floor of that church, and it commemorates the life of Sister Helen Margaret, who died of tuberculosis at the young age of 39. When Holy Cross Church was torn down in the 1930’s, this plaque, the metal sanctuary lamps, and the Stations of the Cross were moved here to the Main Chapel.

The plaques on the chapel walls list the names of departed Sisters of CSJB. These commemorative items were made by Sister Elizabeth Hilda and the St. Marguerite’s girls. Placing the names of departed sisters and brothers on the chapel wall is a very ancient monastic tradition.

Archival Photos from 1915

Parlor

Refectory

Main Chapel

Church Workroom with St. Anna’s girl at work on embroidery and a matron

Sitting Room

Library

Chapter Room

Restoration Project

The Convent is listed in the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places, cited as a rare early example of French Eclectic architecture in America.

In the past, restoration projects at the Community of St. John Baptist (CSJB) were made possible by the Garden State Historic Preservation Trust Fund administered by the New Jersey Historic Trust/State of New Jersey and by the Morris County Open Space, Farmland and Historic Preservation Trust Fund. However, in 2018, the State Supreme Court ruled that taxpayer-funded grants to religious institutions violate the state Constitution’s Religious Aid Clause. Since then, CSJB has had to rely on friends and benefactors for the many repair and maintenance projects of the Convent, St. Marguerite’s Retreat House, and Convent Cemetery.

In 2023 CSJB was identified by the nonprofit organization Preservation New Jersey (PNJ) as one of the top ten endangered historical sites in the state.

Phase 1 of the Capital Campaign raised millions of dollars and accomplished replacement of the Convent roof, boiler replacement in the Convent, Main Chapel and St. Marguerite’s, a new septic system, and barrier-free access at St. Marguerite’s. The next phase of fundraising is needed for Convent stucco replacement, electrical system work, repair of weakened chimneys, and bringing all bathrooms, walkways and hallways up to Americans with Disabilities Act standards.

Text: Sr. Monica Clare, Helen Wall
Photographs: Sr. Monica Clare
Archival photos enhancements: Ernie Maw

Special thanks to:
Mendham Township Historic Preservation Committee for co-sponsoring this event as part of the Township’s 275th Anniversary;

All the volunteers who made the day possible,

The visitors who came to learn the history of this historic landmark and beautiful sacred space.