West (Front) Elevation
St. John's Episcopal Church in Monterey, California

Ernest Coxhead designed this lovely church in the Shingle Style in 1891.  As an English architect who had immigrated to California in the 1880's, Coxhead often expressed a strong affinity for the English Arts and Crafts Movement in his work.  Cut in half, moved to a new site, extended, and unsympathetically re-roofed with composition shingles, the church still retains much of its original woodsy charm.  Coxhead's masterful treatment of the shingles as they weave and swoop around the exterior is extremely playful, although this may be difficult to appreciate from a distance.  The Romanesque entrance vestibule was a later addition that lacks the panache of the original.  But it blends in nicely, incorporating the original doors (possibly a copy) and taking its cue from the Shingle Style vocabulary of another great architect, H. H. Richardson.  Photo taken in 2000 by Howard J. Partridge.

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