A North Philly church reinvented itself and revived a school — and now must preserve its historic house of worship, as well

After emerging from a bitter theological dispute that led to its closure in 2006, the 176-year-old Church of St. James the Less faces yet another existential threat: water.

The roof is relatively new and the building appears structurally sound, but moisture — perhaps leaking from window frames or leaching from the mortar — is slowly damaging the exterior and interior granite walls, as well as columns in the sanctuary.

Early next year, a consultant using ground-penetrating radar and other technologies is set to start looking for answers to the question of what ails the Clearfield Street landmark in North Philadelphia’s Allegheny West neighborhood.

“As we do good things for the community, we have to take care of the space those good things emanate from,” said Father Andrew Kellner, an Episcopal priest who is chaplain of St. James and of the St. James School, as well.

Father Sean Mullen, the rector of St. Mark’s in Center City, which adopted St. James as a mission church in 2008, said: “If your building is leaking, it undermines your capacity to respond to the community’s needs.”

Mullen, along with David Kasievich, now head of the school, and Audrey Evans, a longtime parishioner and renowned pediatric oncologist who died Sept. 29, are described by St. James community members as the founding trio of a more diverse, neighborhood-focused congregation.

They decided to open a private, Episcopal school first, in what had been the parish center building, in 2011. The facility on Clearfield Street across from the church serves 83 children in grades four through eight, tuition-free. A $7.2 million expansion, including three new classrooms, a kitchen, and other amenities, will be ready for occupancy in February.

“We raised the money from private individuals and foundations, as well as crowd-funding campaign in the community and among alumni,” Kasievich said.

» READ MORE: A new beginning for fifth graders at the new St. James School (from 2011)

“The growth has been fantastic, and this new building is just the beginning of what St James can offer,” said Shenia Reddy, who has served on the school’s governing board for four years.

Reopening the church was a gradual process, described by Kellner, Mullen, Kasievich, and others as intentionally attentive to and inclusive of the concerns of a neighborhood already being challenged by systemic racism, poverty, and gentrification.

In its earlier incarnation, St. James — described by some longtime residents as having had a positive, if somewhat remote, relationship with the community — was beloved by many members for remaining a devoutly traditional Episcopal parish amid changes in the neighborhood and the world around it.

But by the early 2000s, as main-line Protestant congregations across America wrestled with calls to ordain women and recognize same-sex relationships, a group of St. James parishioners fought to break away from what they viewed as a too-liberal Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania.

The group sued the diocese for control of the property. The state Supreme Court ruled against the parishioners in December 2005, and the church was shuttered shortly after.

“I was here through the court battle and the transition,” said Helena Best, who lives in the neighborhood and has attended St. James for nearly 40 years. Her grandson, Justin Best, was valedictorian of his graduating class at St. James School and is now a junior at Ursinus College.

“The end result was the church became more valuable to the community and especially to the children in the community,” she said.

Named for the man generally believed to have been the younger of two apostles of Jesus called James, the church was built between 1846 and 1848. It’s a reproduction of St. Michael’s, a 13th-century church in Longstanton, England, about 70 miles north of London, and is considered the first and perhaps finest American example of medieval parish church design.

St. James was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1985 and is “an incredibly significant building,” said Philip Scott, a Chestnut Hill architect who specializes in church preservation. The backstory also is significant, he said: ”A bunch of prominent Philadelphians decided they wanted to build a chapel and commissioned someone in England [to provide the specifications for] what’s not an interpretation, but a recreation.”

Given the vista of nearby Laurel Hill and Mount Vernon cemeteries, as well as the sprawling graveyard surrounding St. James, some local residents call their neighborhood Paradise, although it also gets referred to as East Falls, Hunting Park, and even Manayunk.

The cemetery at St. James features the mausoleum of Philadelphia’s pioneering department store magnate John Wanamaker. Designed by the noted architect John T. Windrim, it includes a memorial bell tower that’s also a local landmark.

In 2018, Kasievich led an effort to repair the chimes, which had been silent for some time. The melody of ”Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the James Weldon Johnson composition described as the Black national anthem, echoed through the neighborhood before a recent Sunday evening service.

“You wouldn’t have heard this song” chiming from the tower during the previous incarnation of the church, said Kasievich, who is married to Kellner.

Randall Jefferson, a lifelong Episcopalian from West Philly who is active in church affairs, served on the advisory board when the founders sought help in figuring out how best to restart and structure St. James, which now operates independently of the diocese.

“I like to visit the smaller churches, and one Sunday I decided to go to St. James to see if I could help,” Jefferson said. “The messages that Father Kellner gives kept me coming back.”

He credited Kellner and Kasievich with opening up communication with the neighborhood and beyond, including at regular listening sessions at a local McDonald’s.

“We had been overlooked,” said Rosalie Cooper, who heads up the Ridge-Allegheny West-Hunting Park neighborhood association. “But David and Father Sean talked to us. We told them we wanted to see after-school programs ... and since then we have seen very positive things happening with the church.”

During the five years St. James was closed, the property “became kind of a canyon of darkness,” Mullen said. “We’ve turned the lights back on.”

A mix of private individuals and foundations provide large as well as small donations toward the $5 million needed to operate the school, church, ”Welcome Table” community assistance program, and provide ongoing support for St. James grads in college, Kasievich said.

Charles Bransby-Zachary, a professional nondestructive evaluation consultant, has been using high-tech tools to evaluate buildings with problems since 1997.

“St. James is experiencing a combination of issues,” he said by phone from Yonkers, N.Y. “Moisture appears to be coming directly through the walls. It’s causing the exterior walls to exfoliate layers, like an onion.

“The main interior columns are also exfoliating to a level, which is concerning — not structurally at the moment but concerning in terms of how do we [resolve] this?” said Bransby-Zachary.

Using thermal and ultrasound imaging of the walls and columns, recording changes in humidity and temperature over time in the sanctuary, testing samples of the granite, and observing in-person during severe rainstorms together should help determine the source of the moisture, he said.

Kellner said the St. James community hopes to preserve not only the church but the “embracing” sensation being within it creates.

“Our liturgies come alive in that space in a way they wouldn’t otherwise,” he said.