The New York Landmarks Conservancy has announced 22 Sacred Sites Grants totaling over $300,000 awarded to historic religious properties throughout New York State, including three Robert W. Wilson Sacred Sites Challenge Grants in Manhattan.
$25,000 was awarded to Riverside Church for stained glass window restoration; $30,000 to Church of the Incarnation for spire masonry restoration, and $30,000 to Judson Memorial Church for masonry façade, wood window and door restoration.
“Religious institutions anchor their communities,” said Peg Breen, president of The New York Landmarks Conservancy. “They remind us of our history and provide vital social service and cultural programs today.”
Riverside Church has retained Julie Sloan, a Massachusetts-based historic stained-glass consultant, to informally monitor conditions of the eight stained-glass windows in the apse over the past several years. Sloan’s scope calls for the removal, documentation, and restoration of these windows.
The Riverside Church complex includes a series of historic spaces, 20 floors of meeting rooms, rehearsal rooms, chapels, and more.
The Nave holds stained glass windows designed in the tradition of Chartres Cathedral, but made in the United States and France. The Christ Chapel is patterned after the eleventh century Romanesque nave of the fortress church of St. Nazaire at Carcassonne. The Assembly Hall is a large gothic-style space with stone pillars and a stage. Other spaces include a meditation Chapel, Theatre, historic gym, and several banquet spaces.
Riverside’s 400 foot tower is home to the world’s largest tuned bell (forged in 1925), and the church also contains an organ built for the church in 1930.
The Church of the Incarnation in Manhattan has received a $30,000 for spire masonry restoration.
The church is working with preservation architects Jan Hird Pokorny, and has two proposals from preservation contractors Preserv and Nicholson & Galloway, which call for the repointing of approximately 1,200 linear feet of mortar joints in the church’s spire, sounding all stones, and the removal and retooling of damaged brownstone and the sound material beneath it.
Where needed, stones will be repaired with a dutchman patch, where a new piece of stone is pinned to the cut-back surface of the old stone.
It is anticipated that there will be very limited replacement of entire stones which are too severely deteriorated to save.
Two deteriorated brownstone gablets (ornamental gables) will be disassembled and recreated in cast stone. Finally, four, zinc finials on the gablets will be removed, repaired and repainted.
A Gothic Revival structure, designed by architect Emlen T. Littell, the church was built in 1864 and is part of a trio of buildings including the parish house and church rectory, which together form an important reminder of the development of the Murray Hill area during the mid-19th century.
The building was built of brownstone with light-colored sandstone trim. It was restored and enlarged by D. & J. Jardine following a fire in 1882. The church contains some of the finest ecclesiastical artwork in America, including stained-glass windows designed by William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and John LaFarge.
Judson Memorial Church received a $30,000 for masonry façade, wood window and door restoration.
Located in Greenwich Village, the church has been working with a team of consultants consisting of building conservator William Stivale, and preservation engineer Marie Ennis of Old Structures Engineering. Stivale has a long history of working with Judson.
The full project scope consists of a combination of restoration and in-kind replacement of deteriorated wood brickmolds, window sills, wood frames, jambs, casings, and trim. Copper flashing will be installed on the window sills, and the existing exterior entrance doors will be repaired and refinished in kind.
The installation of additional copper flashing will prevent further decay of the terra cotta cornice, and brick and terra cotta masonry will be cleaned, repaired, and repointed.
The church was completed in 1893 by one of America’s most prestigious architecture firms, McKim, Mead, and White. It was built as a memorial to Adoniram Judson, the first American Baptist missionary in Asia.
Funded in part by John D. Rockefeller, the church is one of Stanford White’s masterworks. Situated along the south side of Washington Square Park, the buff brick, Renaissance-revival church rests on a limestone base. It has a campanile, and a five-bay façade with monumental round-arched stained-glass windows.
The low-pitched, gable roof has three oculus windows which face onto Washington Square Park.
