1.  Those chairs -- are there 70?  I read that they were anonymously donated but everyone thinks the donor was Phoebe Hearst.  Do you think she was?

I asked Annette Bailey for the explicit source for this intriguing suggestion, and though she said she would share it with me more than once, she never did. Maybe Janet could. Neither I nor Alan Thomsen have ever heard that before our two Baileys wrote their insider history on the web site, and we still would like to know what it is. Annette told me what they found wasn't conclusive, but merely suggestive. I published my reasons why I thought the P. Hearst identification would be odd and out of the ordinary for a woman who loved public recognition for her philanthropy (including the two metal statues at our church), so I am STILL curious as to the source and would really like to know what it is.

2. I read that Joseph Worcester was best friend with William Keith and John Muir, is that right?

There is no doubt that Keith was JW's "best friend," in the sense of the amount of time spent together. Whether one could say that JW was Keith's best friend is more speculative. Muir and Keith were very good friends and took at least one if not two trips to Europe together. I would leave that speculation to a Keith specialist. Keith and JW had very much of a pastor-parishioner relationship angle, and with Muir the relationship was undoubtedly of a different nature. Muir and Keith did not spend nearly as much time together on a regular basis and did Keith and JW, who for three decades saw each other multitple times every week. I have detailed that relationship in my article, "A Painter and a Pastor." JW and Muir were not close friends, but more acquaintances.

3. The garden -- can you name the original plants and what parts of the world they came form.

Not really, beyond the Irish yew shrubs (now trees). The earliest pictures show a rather spare garden. The English laurel tree (by the yews) came in later. The redwoods came in a couple of decades at least later. The olive tree, which is now already gone, was also a few decades after the opening. The Japanese maple we know was given and handpicked by Bruce Porter in the 1950s and that he and Othmar Tobisch planted it themselves. Porter was the primary landscape architect specialist among the original collaborators, so that's a fascinating tidbit that he came made such a late-in-life contribution.

4.  How many members of the congregation.

Then or now? JW somewhat famously hated to count and publish numbers, but he did a couple of times for the early California Association of the New Jerusalem in the first decade of the 20th century. I believe that the congregation numbered around 60-70 then, with a solid attendance during JW's time. You must have some kind of membership roll there now. "Membership" of course is a fleeting concept and often doesn't mean very much (in that people can stay on rolls for a long time after being active, and many active people never join)....

5.  Can you tell me what year the Church was had the second most weddings in the USA?

I don't understand this question. The turn towards an open door policy for weddings and the popularity for having one's wedding there shot up very dramatically after WW II. Before the late Forties, the numbers were very insignificant. But then in the Fifties through mid-Nineties (with some up-and-down) it "enjoyed" amazing numbers, compared to any other church in SF.

6.  I have heard Emmanual Swedenborg described as the "Swedish Leonardo da Vinci"  is that correct?

Well, I think such a designation is meant to convey the "polymath" nature of accomplishment. In some ways, ES was more broadly accomplished (in terms of contributions in more fields) than Da Vinci. Ripley's "Believe It or Not" Museum had an exhibit for a long time on ES entitled "The World's Greatest Achiever".

7.  Did Helen Keller ever visit this Church?

Highly doubtful, and I certainly have never heard that she did.

8.  Is William Blake considered to be a Swedenborgian?  What about the movie actor, Jake Gyllenhaal?

Blake and his wife Catherine famously signed the very first membership roll in London in 1788, but it appears that they never sustained active participation in the fledgling organized Swedenborgian church. Blake had a famous "falling out" with Swedenborg's style of revelatory theology, with a return or respect and sense of debt in his latter years. Blake's career is usually broken into "Early Blake," "Middle Blake," and "Late Blake," with his positive engagement being in early and late, but also a vigorous critique in middle.

9.  Is Worcester considered to be the "designer" of the building?  Or is it Bernard Maybeck. or someone else?

A fun detective story, with two primary camps: one that says the official architect of record, A. Page Brown,  indeed should be regarded as the primary interpreter of JW's vision into actual architectural plans, and the other school claiming that a lead designer in his firm, A.C. Schweinfurth, should be given that designation, with the majority today going with the formerr. Maybeck was not the designer, but the draftsman--tho he clearly had enthusiasm for the project and there is evidence that he was a creative participant. We all agree that the basic vision was JW's, who was an amateur architect and did design four homes that are now famous.

1.  Those chairs -- are there 70?  I read that they were anonymously donated but everyone thinks the donor was Phoebe Hearst.  Do you think she was?

A. There were originally 80. One or two have gone astray.  Phoebe Hearst may have donated,
but our former minister Rev. Dr. Jim Lawrence doubts that, as she was not known to donate anonymously.  See Jim's recent article in the Messenger.



2. I read that Joseph Worcester was best friend with William Keith and John Muir, is that right?

A. He was certainly best friend of William Keith, and a friend of John Muir also.



5.  Can you tell me what year the Church was had the second most weddings in the USA?

Longtime member Ruth White Bowie made this statement in 1974.  Not verified, but we have
seen probably over 14,000 weddings here since the early 1900s.

Re the reporter's question about what year the Church had the second most weddings in the U.S.-- I believe it was a continuing situation, as most churches would only marry their own
members, but our church was open to all comers whether they were members or not.

(Later)  The quote from Ruth White Bowie was made during an interview in 1976.  She was a long-time member and knew the church very well. She was married there twice, in 1910 and 1955,
and later offered her estate to our church, but we could not accept it, as we did not have
the staff to operate it.   Here is a section of that interview, made when she was 88:

That's when we became engaged and we were married in April '55. He came out and became engaged to me and then he went back to Colorado, of course because he was a busy doctor. And then came out and we were married in San Francisco at the Swedenborgian Church in April 3, '55. And Ralston White and I were married at the Swedenborgian Church April 6, 1910, so both my marriages were at the Swedenborgian Church.
CE:     Tell us a little bit about that church. RB:     Oh it's the second in the United States for weddings. CE:       What's the first one? RB:       Oh, the Little Church Around the Corner in New York City. It has more weddings than the Swedenborgian Church. The Church of the New Jerusalem on Lyons Street between Washington and Jefferson, it's the second in the United States for [weddings]...

Re the design of the church:   Maybeck did the drawings, but the church was designed by the
architectural firm of A.Page Brown from drawings made by Worcester himself.