In Search of the Lost Pulpit

I had heard of the pulpit many times and often wondered what it had looked like. I knew it used to reside where the statue of St. Ignatius now stands, on the epistle side just outside the communion rail, but I could never quite visualize it. I wondered why on earth it ever got consigned to the dungeon, where it sat for decades before being summarily thrown out sometime in the late 1980s by a practical but insensitive Building & Grounds chairman, who apparently thought it was just a waste of good storage space. I didn't think too much more about it until last winter when we were forced to clear out some high and obscure storage shelves in order to find places for the many items that were displaced by the electrical upgrade. One Saturday we tackled the dusty boxes that sat on the top shelf and were amazed to find a box of glass plates and negatives of photos that must have been taken in the very first years after the church was built. At that time I had no idea that they were most likely the work of Charles Frederic Zabriskie, who was senior warden for 25 years in addition to being an important early photographer. I looked through the collection of a dozen or so images of the interior of the church and made a note to get back to them at some time after the more pressing work of redistributing our sacristy storage space. Several months later I was given an essay on the life and work of C.F. Zabriskie by Randall Kau, who thought I might be interested in reading about him. CFZ's great granddaughter had sent the thesis to him after she had visited St. Ignatius in the spring of 2003. I had met Christiane briefly in the sacristy one Sunday in May, in fact the very day we were beginning our Capital Campaign. It seemed quite coincidental at the time since we were scheming about getting in touch with descendants of our early patrons to hit them up for donations for the campaign and suddenly there she was, on the very day we were launching the effort. I just happened to be in the sacristy as she came in with Rob, our resident archivist, who did not introduce her other than to say she was interested in seeing the statuary in the sanctuary. Another religious fanatic, I thought, wanting to kiss the feet of St. Ignatius. We were blessed with one of those every now and then. I went on with preparing the thurible for Solemn Mass and thought nothing more about her until later that day when we had our campaign kick-off reception at the Bessire's apartment and Randall told me that the great granddaughter of C.F. Zabriskie had shown up at the 9:00 Mass that day. I was incredibly amazed, but all I really wanted to know was whether we had gotten a donation from her. No, he said with a laugh, she had told him that CFZ had given most of the family fortune to us a century ago and there wasn't much left after that. I didn't much care to hear anything more and didn't give it another thought until almost two years later when Randall gave me a copy of the thesis that she had sent to him and Rob shortly after her visit, that told all about CFZ's life and work. He had been quite a dedicated and skilled early photographer who started taking pictures about 1890. In those days the process of developing pictures involved immersion in rather toxic chemicals. CFZ's health suffered greatly from his dedication to photography and he eventually succumbed to an early death just after Easter in 1914. He left quite a treasure trove of images, however, and the New York State Historical Association has the collection in its Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. I am planning a trip up there this weekend to see it and I hope to return with copies of his pictures of Fr. Ritchie and St. Ignatius. I am also trying to get this pulpit rebuilt. We have a couple of skilled carpenters in the parish and I am praying that we will be able to recreate this simple yet elegant design. We have been without a real pulpit for about 80 years now since the Cram-Ferguson statute of St. Ignatius displaced it, and somehow I think Fr. Ritchie's spirit will rest a lot easier once it's restored.