Dr. Eric W. Gritsch

The Rev. Dr. Eric W. Gritsch Memorial Fund, Ltd.
PO Box 23064
Baltimore, MD 21203-5064
bonbmore@comcast.net

2022 Church Tour of St. Marks Lutheran

This Treasure Trove Church Tour was held on Saturday, February 26, 2022 for the Eric W. Gritsch Memorial Fund. The event was lead by the church's former Pastor of 31 years, Reverend Dale Dusman.

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church at the corner of St. Paul and Twentieth Streets was dedicated on November 6, 1898. The congregation had engaged Joseph Evans Sperry, a prominent local architect, to design the Romanesque style building.

It is the Byzantine style Tiffany interior which sets the building apart.
Tiffany’s head designer, Rene de Quellen, was in charge of the interior design.

Among the many Christian symbols included in the decorative scheme of the interior, the sacred emblem of the cross is the most prominent.

Forty Latin and Roman crosses and two thousand five hundred and eleven Greek crosses confront worshippers and visitors to this most intriguing house of worship.

All of the stained-glass windows are from the Tiffany Studios with the exception of the “medallion” window (1917) by Joseph Lauber, who at the time of its installation was teaching at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

The city of Baltimore has many outstanding churches and some of them have windows by the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company. St. Mark’s, with the only Tiffany interior in Baltimore, was granted Historic Interior Landmark status in 2012.