Kudos for the Church of the Advocate

• National Historic Landmark (1996)

This recognition is determined by the United States Secretary of Interior for buildings that are nationally significant in American history.  The Church of the Advocate shares this distinction with some of the nation's most important historic properties including Mount Vernon, Pearl Harbor, and the Martin Luther King Birthplace.  National Historic Landmark status is the most prestigious recognition that a historic site can achieve in the United States.

• Save America's Treasures Grant (2005)

The Church of the Advocate was awarded a Save America's Treasures grant based on its historic significance.  This highly-competitive prestigious award has provided $500,000 toward much needed repairs to the exterior of the building.

• National Register of Historic Places (1980)

This list is the nation's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects worthy of preservation.  The Church of the Advocate achieved this status by meeting the four criteria required for the Register – contribution to American history, association with significant people, distinctive architecture and construction, and the ability to serve as an educational site about history.

• Pennsylvania Inventory of Historic Places (1979) 
  This is the highest recognition the state provides for historic sites.
• Philadelphia Historic Commission – Philadelphia Register of Historic Places (1980)

This is the highest recognition the city provides for historic sites.  The Church of the Advocate is also considered a key site in the Diamond Street Historic District.

• Landmark Building Award, Philadelphia Chapter AIA (1985)

• King's Handbook of Episcopalian Churches, a register of the most prominent Episcopal building in the country, listed the advocate when it was still being built in 1889.

Roger Moss in Historic Sacred Places of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005) wrote that "The Church of the Advocate is one of the principal monuments of the Gothic Revival in the United States, and the only major one of its period based systematically on French sources. It is loosely based on thirteenth-century French churches, particularly the small Gothic cathedrals marked with enormous rose windows.   The Church of the Advocate is nothing less than a quadripartite, stone-vaulted French medieval Gothic church dropped in to a North Philadelphia neighborhood that is now physically and economically devastated."  

Although all of the work of the church architect's Charles Burn is important, Roger Moss tells us that it is believed that if Burns "designed but one church in the late nineteenth century, The George W. South Memorial Protestant Episcopal Church of the Advocate would sustain his reputation."

Chronology