[Autograph Letter, Signed "Phillips Brooks"] by BROOKS, Phillips - 1890

Two page, in ink, recto and verso on folded, quarto sheet of letterhead. Previously folded for mailing, else very good or better.  

A polite and informative letter written in response to a query from William P. Blake, Esq. to Phillips Brooks who had served as Rector of Trinity Church since 1869, writing from the church rectory.  After the destruction of the church building on Summer Street in the Boston fire of November 9, 1872, he oversaw the design and construction of the new church building in Copley Square, designed by H. H. Richardson. It appears Blake was inquiring about the possibility of dedicating a stained-glass window in the new church under construction. In the letter, Brooks tells Blake that the only remaining window proposed for the Chapel is intended for a memorial "that which Mr. Suter has intended to give in memory of his daughter." In actuality, the memorial window created by the famed stained-glass artist John LaFarge was created for his friend, the architect Charles Follen McKim. McKim commissioned it as a memorial to his young wife, Julia Amory Appleton (1859-87) who died in childbirth.