Among the greatest treasures in our church that offer "rest for our souls" are the magnificent stained-glass windows that we are blessed to enjoy. Created nearly a century ago by the artist Oliver Smith (1896-1980), a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, they tell the Bible story, one stage at a time, moving from the Old Testament to the New, as the viewer moves from the back of the church to the front.
Oliver Smith was inspired in his work principally by Chartres Cathedral in France -- for he researched and duplicated the methods that were used in the thirteenth century. He set up his workshop on the church grounds, the site of the present parking lot, and there designed, colored and fired the glass, which he then assembled with strips of lead. He made his own glass from formulas followed by those thirteenth-century European glass makers and believed that he had discovered the method by which the great artists of the past achieved their glowing colors.
The three largest windows, in the Chancel and Transepts, were all made in Oyster Bay; those in the aisles and porch were completed later in Smith’s studio in Pennsylvania by the same process.