1020 North Brand Boulevard · Glendale, CA 91202 · 818.240.3860
St. Mark's Church was one of the pioneer churches of Glendale, founded in the late 1880s when the area was still almost entirely pasture and farmlands with a population of only a few hundred. Among these early settlers was a small colony of English expatriates who had come to southern California for its healthy climate. The first Episcopal services were held during the summer of 1888 in the parlor of Henry J. Moore, an English farmer living on Adams Street. That original congregation, probably about twenty in number, was mostly drawn from three large English families: the Moores, the Penns and the Whitakers. However, the congregation grew as other Glendale settlers -- English, Canadian and American -- joined to worship. The group quickly outgrew the Moore parlor, so services were moved to the small three-room Verdugo Schoolhouse at the corner of what is now Chevy Chase and Broadway.
Lacking a resident Episcopal priest, the Glendale congregation at first enjoyed the occasional visits of the Rev. Elias Birdsall, who as an Episcopal missionary in the 1860s had founded the first permanent Protestant church in Los Angeles. Now in the 1880s the Rector of St. Paul's Church in Los Angeles, Elias Birdsall came out to Glendale once a month to administer Holy Communion to the informal Episcopal gathering meeting in the local schoolhouse. On March 22, 1889, the Rt. Rev. William Kip, Episcopal Bishop of California, consented to the organization of a mission in Glendale to be known as the Mission of the Good Shepherd.
As its first resident priest, he appointed the Rev. John D. Easter, a former university science professor and army chaplain during the Civil War. Dr. Easter had just been appointed the Rector of St. Hilda's Hall, a new Episcopal girls school that was being established in a large Victorian hotel recently built in an unsuccessful attempt to found a resort in Glendale. For several years, the Episcopal congregation in Glendale met in St. Hilda's small chapel.
In 1893, the congregation began work on its own church. The land for it, located on the northeast corner of Broadway and Isabel, was donated by Erskine Mayo Ross, a prominent lawyer and judge who was also a large property owner in Glendale. The building, a small wooden "stick" style Victorian Gothic, was sufficiently completed in 1893 to be useable for services. Around that same time, the congregation decided to change the name of the church to St. Mark's. But final completion of the church building was delayed for almost ten years owing to the Depression of the 1890s that hit southern California – and the little mission church -- particularly hard.
With the start of the new century, the local economy improved and the population of Glendale began expanding. A new rector was appointed for the mission, the Rev. George Eley. Mr. Eley was an English emigré who a few years earlier had been a member of the congregation but had left to study for the priesthood. With his return to Glendale, the church was revitalized. It also benefited from the leadership of a new Warden, Dr. David Winslow Hunt, a prominent local doctor and business leader whose house, known as the "Doctor's House," is preserved today in Brand Park.
Between the efforts of Mr. Eley and Dr. Hunt, the church building was finally completed in 1903 with the addition of a tower and several new stained glass windows. Over the next ten years the congregation of St. Mark's grew and in 1913 the church building was physically picked up and moved to a new location on the northeast corner of Louise and Harvard, closer to the new center of town along Brand Boulevard. At the time, the church was also remodeled and expanded to accommodate its growing congregation. The following year, on April 22, 1914, the mission was organized as a self-supporting parish church. Its first rector was Dr. C. Irving Mills. The growth and optimistic spirit of the church, however, evaporated in the unsettled times around the First World War. Financial problems and a split between the rector and the vestry left the church broken and divided for several years during which Dr. Mills resigned.
In the early 1920s, after several years without a rector, the church again began a period of growth and stability. The Rev. Philip Kemp was called in 1922 and remained at St. Mark's until 1935. During that time the church was further expanded and a new parish hall constructed.