From 2017 to 2025, the Allentown Art Museum conducted a campaign to raise funds to acquire two 14-foot-tall stained-glass windows by the renowned Tiffany Studios of New York. The campaign grew into a grass-roots community effort to preserve these exquisite examples of American decorative art. More than 220 donors supported the acquisition, conservation, and installation of the windows, which were commissioned in the early twentieth century by parishioners of the United Presbyterian Church in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. The purchase of the windows, completed in 2024, ensures their preservation so that generations to come can enjoy them.

The windows will be unveiled to the public on Saturday, April 26, 2025. Admission to the Museum will be free, as it is every day we are open, Thursday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Third Thursdays until 8 p.m.

An exhibition of Tiffany Studio stained-glass lamps and small windows will be on display near the memorial windows in the Museum’s newly renovated Kress Gallery, also starting on April 26. Tiffany’s Gardens in Glass will continue on view through June 29, 2025.

To help our community enjoy and learn more about the windows, the Museum has planned a full schedule of “Summer of Tiffany” programming. You can SEE IT HERE.

Detail of the Sarah Ann Derr memorial window, bottom

•

Tiffany Studios was founded by Louis Comfort Tiffany, whose father created the iconic jewelry company Tiffany & Co. Branching off from his father’s business, Louis quickly became a pioneer of a distinctly American version of stained glass, more accurately known as leaded glass, which he incorporated into windows, lamps, and interior décor beginning in the late nineteenth century.

Agnes Northrop

Scholars attribute the design of the windows to be acquired to Tiffany Studios lead designer Agnes Northrop (1857-1953). Northrop collaborated with Louis Tiffany in pioneering landscapes as a subject for memorial windows. Many of her memorial designs used rivers as a metaphor for the passage of life. Additionally, she used sunrise and sunset as symbols of birth and death. One of the two windows portrays a scene of waning light that suggests the  tranquility of a setting sun.

The windows are exemplary of Northrop’s signature style and transcendent achievements in early twentieth century American decorative art, created by a female artist at the height of her creative powers.