From McKim to McDreamy

Everyone’s a flutter cause Patrick Dempsey, aka McDreamy, is at St. Peters, filming scenes for the pilot episode of Ways & Means, a drama starring Dempsey as a ‘jaded member of Congress.’ There are “US Capitol” police cars on South St and a ‘news van’ from WEUB, Wash., DC, a station apparently known for its “Award Winning Coverage.”

Dempsey is just the most recent notable to visit St. Peters. In 2019, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi spoke with Dr. Kali Gross about his book, How to Be an Antiracist. Speaking of healing America’s wounds, Dr. Kendi said, “We have to imagine a different kind of country. The single governing ideology that distinguishes America from others is fear.”

In 2018, also as part of the Morristown Festival of Books, Ibtihaj Muhammad spoke about what it was like to be the first Muslim-American woman in hijab to compete in the Olympics, an experience she chronicled in her book, Proud: My Fight for an Unlikely American Dream. Muhammad signed one copy of her book for a young gymnast, writing, “Alyssa, may your faith be greater than your fears.”

In 1924, John D Rockefeller, Jr. came to hear a special recital of the St. Peter's bell tower. At the time, St. Peter’s carillon had 35 bells and was the largest one anywhere in the US.

Mr. Rockefeller planned to have a 45-bell carillon installed at Riverside Church, so he came to Morristown to hear St. Peter's carillon and talk with John Taylor, its creator.

And, I don’t know if he ever actually set foot on the grounds, but St. Peters was designed by Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead, and White, one of the premier architects in American history.

McKim was the lead architect in the design of the Boston Public Library, the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia Univ. and the Penn Station that existed in NYC from 1910-1963.

#WeAreAllInThisTogether #McDreamy #DrKendi #StPeters #ProfessorKaliGross #McKimMeadandWhite #IbtihajMuhammad #MorristownBooks #MFOB #Morristown #NJHistory #NJ

Photo credits: Nj.com, Morristowngreen.com, Morristown-Morris Township Joint Free Public Library