Notes from my Knapsack 10-22-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 10-22-2026
Jeff Gill

From Greek Revival to Baroque, a cultural journey
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When considering the architectural style of the Oval Office, whose history we looked at last time, there’s a transition from the Greek Revival influences in the White House complex as a whole to a Colonial Revival influence in what Taft and finally Franklin D. Roosevelt embodied in their executive office design.

In Granville, we have a scattering of Greek Revival buildings, enough that we get almost as much attention from cultural tourism around architecture as Newark does for the Louis Sullivan jewel-box bank on Courthouse Square.

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the Avery-Downer House where now resides the Robbins Hunter Museum are two gems on Broadway, although we have a number of other homes in the village that embody that period of design. The former Beth Eden up on campus, now Reese House, is a late evocation of the earlier style, built in 1901 and considered Federal Revival (akin to the Oval Office and West Wing design style), but is often called Greek Revival — that is technically an 1820 to 1860 architectural term.

This is why the Executive Mansion (Teddy Roosevelt named it the “White House” in 1901) is considered a Neoclassical design, but again, with new influences in the extension of the West Wing (we are not going to talk about the East Wing, no we are not), and the modifications culminating with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Oval Office as it is in outline today.

So, Neoclassical, Greek or Colonial Revival, let alone Federal Revival: who cares? Well, we care because architecture says something. If you aren’t sure about that, you should sit on a church building design committee some time. Oh, it says something.

Modernism has its fans, but to be perfectly blunt (and I’m two columns in, almost done with this week’s installment, with more to say in another two weeks) modernism is a close kin to budget building. To build a Swasey Chapel today would take immensely more money even adjusted for inflation, because craft work is valued more, and it should be said more justly. Skilled labor was cheaper in 1922, let alone 1822, so ornamentation and detail costs more today. In many cases, especially public buildings but also often in church structures or other traditionally decorative types of architecture, a modernist aesthetic goes along with cost control and keeping a project under budget.

We’re still not sure what Modernism “says.” Some of us think it says “blehhh.” (That’s with three h’s, by the way.) Don’t even get me started on Brutalism, which is affordability meets concrete. What does it say? Well, the name says quite a bit. Brutally so.

Baroque, on the other hand, isn’t just ornamentation run riot, it says something symbolically to both the conscious and the unconscious. A dense florid accumulation of twirls and swirls has a history and narrative all its own, and frankly American ideals have never had much in common with the Baroque template of design. We just don’t do Baroque, except for maybe Bach, and that’s late Baroque music, dangerously close to a different subject altogether.

When you decorate a space with Baroque ornamentation, you are seeking to overwhelm, to hyper-stimulate, to create a sort of emotional intensity in the experience. Not to inspire or move one to reflect on simple rules and essential values, but to be reminded you are less than the room and space and central figure in that office.

That’s why Taft and later Roosevelt went for a more Greek Revival vibe in the Oval Office they appropriated from the Palladian echo in the White House ovals. They wanted a simpler, more egalitarian design, in which people could reason together.

You can see where I’m going with this, I hope. More to come.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s not a big go-for-baroque kind of guy. Tell him what architecture says to you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 10-16-2026

Faith Works 10-16-2026
Jeff Gill

Looking for the rules, or maybe just how to apply them
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After a few weeks of public discussion about an issue, I can’t always resist the temptation to be a preacher about things. Even in a general purpose, wide-spectrum setting. So let me talk about movies for a moment, but starting with a play.

Philip Barry was a Broadway playwright during the era of O’Neill and Sherwood, Kaufman and Hart. He wrote a play for his friend Katharine Hepburn, who appeared in it on the stage, and then a movie adaptation of the modestly popular show which did very well up on the screen.

There’s a particular line I have in mind from “The Philadelphia Story" (1940), spoken by the character Mike Connor, as played by James Stewart, to heiress Tracy Lord, indelibly played by Katharine Hepburn, about dimly remembered events of the night before due to drink:

"You were extremely attractive, and as for distant and forbidding, on the contrary. But you also were a little the worse, or better, for wine, and there are rules about that.”

You may know the scene better from the musical reimagining in a Newport setting, “High Society” (1956), with Frank Sinatra as Mike the reporter, and Grace Kelly as Tracy the bride-to-be, but the key line is delivered nearly the same. After Tracy asks if she was cold and forbidding to him during her champagne haze, Mike replies:

“Not at all. On the contrary, but you were somewhat the worse — or the better — for the wine, and there are rules about such things.”

(By the way: about artificial intelligence, which so far ain’t too super. AI has tried to tell me twice over that it was C.K. Dexter Haven who said it, portrayed by Cary Grant in 1940 and Bing Crosby in 1956, but good old Dexter, who would get the bride back in the end, was simply an approving witness to the exchange. I told AI this, sternly, to which it said “of course you are correct” which makes you wonder, doesn’t it?)

Anyhow, this scene proves that even seventy, let alone eighty-six years ago, people were aware of the relationship between alcohol and consent. “There are rules about such things.”

Thank you, Mike; and thanks to Frank and Jimmy for delivering the line so sincerely. There are rules about such things. But where are these rules to be found? How do we learn them?

Obviously, not all men, and we’re talking about men here, learn these rules. The rules exist, so either they weren’t taught, or were not learned. I think back, and I have to admit: I don’t recall my father telling me this, not in so many words. It didn’t come up in church, or through the Scout troop, or in a college class. It is a subject in new student orientation now, but it wasn’t in 1978; in many professions and certifications rules such as what Mike the reporter was talking about are included in an ethics or boundary training. The jury is still out on what kind of training effectively communicates what Sinatra and Stewart seemed to know (and yes, I’m aware that there’s some question as to how well Frank applied this rule in real life).

Biblically, most preachers would say this is covered by general teachings about chastity and fidelity, although the question of consent within a marriage is still relevant. Our local legend Victoria Woodhull was both highly effective in communicating, even through Victorian era norms, and notorious in certain circles for speaking up on behalf of mutual consent even (or especially) within a marriage relationship.

Pre-marital sexual intimacy is still a fraught subject even within many religious traditions that are otherwise considered fairly conservative; a number of groups that would surprise you historically didn’t consider an engagement confirmed until the prospective bride was pregnant, which complicates this whole question.

Consent, though, is still key. This may take another essay to reassemble.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s counseled quite a few couples both before and after marriage. Tell him how you’d teach the young at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.