Qualla: St. John's Episcopal Church (Lafayette Square)

St. John's Episcopal Church (Lafayette Square): Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathunder, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the evening of June 1, 2020, federal officers used tear gas, smoke canisters, and pepper balls to clear demonstrators from Lafayette Square. The clearing was to install anti-scale fencing - the stated and officially documented reason. The Department of the Interior's inspector general reported in 2021 that Park Police did not clear the area for Trump's photo op, though witnesses including the church's own rector reported being driven from the patio with tear gas and concussion grenades. Attorney General William Barr was present and had ordered the timeline for fence installation accelerated that afternoon. He went to St. John's Episcopal Church - the small Latrobe-designed Greek Revival building at Sixteenth and H Streets NW that has hosted at least one prayer service from every American president since James Madison - and held up a Bible for photographers in front of its boarded-up parish house. The fire that had given the operation its pretext, in the basement of Ashburton House the night before, had been confined to the church nursery. The Episcopal Bishop of Washington, Mariann Budde, called the use of tear gas to clear the church grounds for a photo opportunity 'antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.'

Image: Jonathunder | CC BY-SA 3.0

St. John's Episcopal Church (Lafayette Square): The Church James Madison Built

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), Public domain. Before St. John's, Episcopalians in the western wards of Washington had three places of worship - one in Georgetown, one near the Capitol, and one in Rock Creek Parish - none of which were practically reachable, as one early parish history put it, in the era of almost impassable ...

Image: Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) | Public domain

St. John's Episcopal Church (Lafayette Square): Pew 28

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0. James Madison, then in the final months of his presidency, attended the consecration on December 27, 1816, and chose Pew 28 as his regular seat. The pew has been kept available for the sitting president of the United States ever since, by tradition rather than by law, and bears a...

Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 3.0

St. John's Episcopal Church (Lafayette Square): Latrobe's Greek Cross

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0. The building today reflects two rounds of expansion. By 1842 the original Greek cross had become too small for the growing parish. A committee led by John Canfield Spencer, Benjamin Ogle Tayloe (son of John III), and General Winfield Scott reconfigured the interior - lowering the...

Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 3.0

St. John's Episcopal Church (Lafayette Square): Ashburton House

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frypie, CC BY-SA 4.0. Across the small garden from the church stands the rectory, known as Ashburton House. It was the residence in 1842 of Alexander Baring, the first Baron Ashburton, the British envoy who negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty settling the long-disputed border between Maine and New...

Image: Frypie | CC BY-SA 4.0

St. John's Episcopal Church (Lafayette Square): What Remains

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jarek Tuszyński, CC BY 4.0. The bell that Joseph Revere cast in 1822 still rings every Sunday morning. It is one of only two Revere bells in Washington, and the only one in continuous service since installation. The interior preserves a chapel cross in polished brass, two sculptures by Jay Hall Carpenter, a...

Image: Jarek Tuszyński | CC BY 4.0