Gothic Revival architecture makes St. Stephen's one of Nebraska's most handsome
early churches, a miniature cathedral patterned after the massive cathedrals of Europe,
most notably St. Stephensdom of Vienna, Austria.
It is widely thought, but cannot be proved, that St. Stephen's of Ashland was designed by
the nation's foremost church architect of the 19th century, Richard Upjohn, who once a year
donated plans for a church, free of charge, to some impoverished parish out in wilderness America,
on condition that his name not be made known. Because the Ashland church bears a striking
resemblance to his own 1865 Church of the Holy Comforter in Eltingville, Staten Island, New York,
and because some of the Ashland parishioners hailed from that area,
it is assumed that Richard Upjohn was indeed the secret architect.
But the important question is not so much who designed St. Stephen's as who built it.
The church was truly a labor of love, built out of local materials by the blood, sweat and tears of local pioneers. Alice Graham wrote that "the remarkable part of it all is not the design but the skill at shaping so appropriate a design using materials at hand and the crude tools of the frontier to add beauty and grace to a house of worship."
In the eastern states it was common to set a church on a hilltop or on the highest knoll. Ashland may seem to be perfectly flat, but St. Stephen's is at the crest of a knoll, at that time the highest point in town.
From all four directions a worshipper had to walk up to the church.
Symbolism is apparent in every part of St. Stephen's, and in its furnishings, too.
The organ is very rare and of real value. This beautiful instrument, about ten feet high and surmounted
by several gilded wooden pipes, is a reed organ and still in perfect playable condition.
The organ cost $137 in 1871. It was shipped by paddle wheel boat up the Missouri River
from Chicago to Nebraska City. Then some early Episcopalians drove to Nebraska City
via horse and wagon and hauled the organ to Ashland.
It has stood in the southeast corner of the church ever since,
and was renovated several years ago by Ellis Grauerholz of Ashland.
The Ashland Arts Council has a long way to go to stem the tide of deterioration on this 135 + year old building.
Born of a time when the state was yound and proud and new, the church met the needs
of a people determined to make Ashland their home. At one time, its roster carried the names
of the well-to-do and influential - - the Wiggenhorns, Harnsbergers, Churchills, von Mansfeldes.
They are gone now, ghosts of the past, mere shadows of the time when the holy bells rang on the knoll of the hill.