With 54 families and 75 Sunday School children. the new congregation had, by December 1890, moved from a home to a vacant grocery store, to a political meeting hall (called the Republican Wigwam) and raised $1500 toward building a church. In April 1891, St. Mary the Virgin became the ninth parish of the Episcopal Church in San Francisco. Father Bolton persuaded Frank Pixley, publisher and editor of the Argonaut, a nationally known newspaper and owner of considerable property in Cow Hollow, to donate a corner lot for the church building. Frank and his wife Amelia also donated the altar painting, a copy of" Asunto Mistico" by G. Cignaroli. The first services in our present church were held on October 4, 1891. An English expatriate, Father Bolton launched a firmly "high church" Anglo-Catholic parish. As the San Francisco Chronicle described it: "the ceremonials will be exceedingly elaborate of the most ritualistic order ever seen in California."
Our history is full of ups and downs. We survived the 1906 earthquake and fire very well (Look for our picture in "Denial of Disaster." a book about the 1906 earthquake published in 1989). We almost did not survive two decades of failed leadership when rector after rector stayed less than a year. and membership dwindled while the neighborhood was growing. We lost parish status and became a mission of the diocese in 1918. A turning point came in the early 1920s when Amelia Pixleys' heirs issued a new deed, lifting her restrictions for "high church" ceremonies only. With a change in style of worship to "broad church," St. Mary's began to attract neighbors who started to attend. As the style of worship changed, we got back on our ministerial and financial feet. Resurrection ensued. By 1940 we were a parish again.
A great deal of change came with the Rev. Keppel Hill, who was rector from 1948 to 1966. The church's interior was reversed, placing the altar at the Steiner Street end, and the entrance off Union Street in the newly-created courtyard. The south (chapel) section was added, with the offices above it and the house on Steiner Street next to the church was purchased (and named Pixley House). The fresco mural scenes in the courtyard from the life of St. Mary were inspired by a dream of Fr. Hill's, and created by artists Lucienne Bloch and Stephen Dimitrioff in 1966 .
The Rev. Richard Fowler came to St. Mary's in 1966 and retired in January 1999. During his almost 33 years, the parish flourished. Membership, outreach programs, worship services, and the buildings all expanded. In the church, the altar has been moved away from the wall so Eucharist can be celebrated facing the congregation; the 1979 Prayer Book was promptly introduced and later the 1982 Hymnal. Three Sunday services have been expanded to include a fourth, innovative worship service. Three choirs: children's, youth, and adult form the foundation for a music ministry augmented by a concert series. Lay ministry thrives with preaching, healing ministers, and sacraments taken to the homebound. We have initiated equal ministerial opportunities for women. lay and ordained. The parish has sponsored many men and women for ordination. We have a deep commitment to outreach, having acted as primary contributors of time and money to create the Episcopal Sanctuary for the Homeless, and founded the ecumenical Ministry to Nursing Homes, among other efforts. An active Youth Group ministers to the children of the parish following their confirmation and Sunday School classes. The Sunday School, with a curriculum tailored to offer lessons from pre-school to confirmation draws many new families. Its popularity served as one reason for a major expansion of the premises, harking back to the days of Miss Gay's Sunday School when the children originally led the parish into being. In 1997 we moved out of our buildings for nine months, for a thorough renovation of the Parish Hall (now Fowler Hall), Pixley House, and to make improvements to the church. With the completion of our reconstruction, we were able to expand our ministries and programs and begin a new era for our Cow Hollow church in the year 2000 with the Rev. Dr. Jason Parkin as Rector.
