In 2022, Pennsylvania salvager Paul Brown paid $6,000 for church windows; one year later, experts identified Tiffany glass, and the pair sold for $200,000

Rarely do old city churches enjoy a peaceful retirement. Buildings change hands, floors are torn up, and anything sufficiently dusty is sold off in a bundle when congregations decline, and maintenance begins to exceed revenue. Most old fixtures are precisely what they appear to be: worn and weathered. Occasionally, however, something valuable escapes because no one stopped to take a careful look.That almost happened in a big Gothic church in West Philadelphia, where two giant round windows had hung above the benches for over a hundred years, covered in a thick layer of grime. In November 2022, Pennsylvania salvager Paul Brown bought the windows as part of a larger sale for $6,000. After Brown contacted Freeman’s for help with the damaged glass, specialists identified the windows as work by Tiffany Studios. They sold at auction on May 18, 2023, for $200,000 before the buyer’s premium, or $252,000 including fees.The sale did not immediately deliver a financial return to Brown. He reportedly spent more than $100,000 on removal and restoration, and a bank later challenged ownership of the windows, leaving the auction proceeds frozen. The dispute raised questions about who legally owned fixtures removed from a historic building.A bargain in West PhiladelphiaThe church stands at the intersection of 50th Street and Baltimore Avenue in West Philadelphia. Built for the congregation of St Paul’s Presbyterian, dedicated in 1901 and extended in 1905, it moved to Hickman Temple AME Church in 1972. New owner, Pastor William Brownlee Sr. of Emmanuel Christian Centre, purchased the 15,000-square-foot property in 2022 and started modernising the space, which included removing a lot of old fixtures.Paul Brown, an architectural salvager based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has spent decades rescuing historic building materials and fixtures. He learned about the windows through a Facebook Marketplace listing and was told they needed to be removed before workers demolished them. He paid $6,000 for the windows and some other fixtures bundled with the windows in November of 2022. Removing the two windows from their stone frames took about a month of painstaking work, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.No one involved knew what they were in for. In his world, Tiffany always meant lights, never windows, Brown has told us. Even local preservationists overlooked it. The 35-page submission the University City Historical Society submitted in 2020 when it nominated the church for historic classification included nothing at all about Tiffany.What the grime was hidingBrown wrapped the windows in packing blankets and called Freeman’s to find out how to fix the shattered and loose glass. They identified the pieces as being from St Paul’s and Tiffany Studios, whose 1910 list of commissions mentions the church under the heading “Wanamaker Memorial”. John Wanamaker, a Philadelphia department-store magnate and church supporter, may have helped arrange the commission. Tiffany’s 1910 records list the church under the heading “Wanamaker Memorial,” although the surviving record does not establish his exact role in commissioning the windows.Each of the windows is around 90 inches wide and is made up of eight petals, eight kites and a central quatrefoil. One is concentrated on a crown and the other on a dove. On one of them, the lot description on Freeman’s own site also mentions a dedication from the church’s Pansy Bible Class. The glass is layered and diversified, with ripple, streaky, mottled, opalescent and acid-etched pieces, some of them plated on the back for depth. Julie Sloan, a stained glass consultant, writes for the auction house that the design is read as a single day, with deep purple night on the outer edge, a thin band of turquoise dawn, and brighter golds and greens closing in to the core.So why didn’t anyone notice? Years of filth and grime undoubtedly obscured the telling elements; the newspapers that marked the church’s consecration didn’t mention Tiffany by name, and the firm’s contemporary renown is grounded in its lamps. But the studio was a behemoth of cathedral glass in its day. By the 1880s, the Tiffany Glass Company was the greatest manufacturer of stained glass windows in the United States, the Met adds. The auction generated $252,000 including fees, but that amount did not represent Brown’s profit: he had reportedly spent more than $100,000 on removal and restoration, and the proceeds were subsequently frozen amid the ownership dispute.Auction day and a legal messThe windows were auctioned at Freeman’s in Philadelphia on May 18, 2023. Each sold for a hammer price of $100,000 to an anonymous buyer, below the low estimate of $150,000 per window. Including the buyer’s premium, the final price was $126,000 per window, or $252,000 for the pair, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.Then came the hitch. Within days of the sale, a law firm representing Fulton Bank, which held the mortgage on the church, argued that the windows were covered by the mortgage lien and therefore belonged to the bank. Freeman had acknowledged earlier that Brown was the legal owner of the windows and held the revenues. As of August 2023, Brown still hadn’t received any money; however, he stated he would split a portion of the profits with the church’s pastor, the Inquirer reported.The dispute showed how the removal of historic fixtures can raise complicated ownership questions, particularly when a building is subject to a mortgage. The auction proceeds remained frozen while the competing claims were addressed. Brown initially sought advice on repairing damaged glass. The inquiry led to the identification of two Tiffany Studios rose windows that had remained in the church for more than a century.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.