Church of St. John the Evangelist - L'église au toit rouge

St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church, commonly known as the "red roof church" is a fine example of Neo-Gothic building from the Victorian era. Established in 1861 as an Anglo-Catholic parish, it was, in the words of Karl Raudsepp, "the first Tractarian church in Canada and the first Anglican free seat church in Montreal". The old system of pew rents, which provided income for churches, was eschewed here with the idea that rich and poor should sit and worship together as equals before God. The present stone church building dates from 1878 and was designed by architect William Tutin Thomas in consultation with the Rev. Edmund Wood, Rector and founder of the parish. It follows strictly the guidelines of the Cambridge Ecclesiological Society "inspired by the churches built a decade earlier in the slums of London's East End by architect James Brooks... a style created especially for poor Anglo-Catholic parishes". The stone rood screen, in Decorated Gothic style, was designed by Henry Vaughan. The three stained glass windows in the west wall over the organ loft, from the glass works of J.C. Spence of Montreal, were originally in the parish's 1861 building.