Chapel Hill Bible Church
Coordinates: 41 ° 35 ′ 11 " N , 73 ° 59 ′ 40" W.
The Chapel Hill Bible Church , formerly the Amity Baptist Church , is a Baptist church off Bingham Road in Marlboro , New York in the United States. It is a small, made of wood building in the Picturesque style of Gothic Revival , which dates from the mid-19th century, it was in the on 7 January 2005 National Register of Historic Places added and represents the most southern entry the Ulster County registry .
The building was not originally built at its current location, but was the church of a congregation in what is now Midtown Manhattan , which had split off from another church further downtown. At the beginning of the 20th century, after the church was no longer in use, a former parishioner who had since moved up to Marlboro had the building dismantled and rebuilt on his property above the Hudson River . For two decades it was used for retreat by the Brotherhood of the Kingdom , a group of like-minded people who advocated social gospel . After another phase of vacancy later in the 20th century, today's church was organized here in the 1970s.
Building and property
The property of the Church is a 12.5 acre (2.5 hectares) large parcel on the west side of an unpaved side road that branches off to the south Marlboroughs Bingham Road in the south, about eight kilometers southwest of the main settlement of the Town , the non-incorporated hamlet of Marlboro. It sits on top of a hill that reaches a height of about 150 meters above sea level and only about 65 meters north of the Orange County border .
The land surrounding the church is rural, either cleared and used as an apple orchard or as an intact forest. A farmhouse is across from the church on the other side of the access road. The grounds of the church are largely overgrown with trees, but the north-eastern part has been cleared of vegetation. A sand-strewn volleyball court was built in this area, and playground equipment is also set up here in the summer months. From the open areas of the property, the view extends over the Hudson Valley in the east to Shawangunk Ridge in the west. The access road bends here and leads across a parking lot to the southeast to a small square playing area with a basketball ring. A second parking lot is located northeast of the church. A modern non-contributing garage faces south. From there a concrete footpath leads to the entrance of the church.
Exterior
The church building itself has a cross-shaped floor plan. It is a one-and-a-half-story building built in timber frame construction on a foundation made of concrete on the front and sides and of stones bricked with mortar on the rear. The sloping terrain exposes the basement on the sides and back, so that the impression of another floor is created. The facade is made in brown color stained cedar verschindelt , the steep gabled roof is covered with tar paper. On it sit three small dormer windows on both sides east of the transept . To the west of it there is a dormer with three windows and a half-roof on both sides. A low bell tower rises at the east end, the front.
The main entrance is on the east facade and is flanked by pointed arch windows with wooden frames. A small, excellent vestibule shields the actual entrance from the weather. It has a gable roof that has the same slope as the main roof. The slightly curved outer entrance has an H-shaped portal frame, the outside of which is clad with tongue and groove panels, the edges on the inside are chamfered and elaborate four-pass patterns are sawn into the gable triangle above. There are lancet windows on either side of the entrance and an octagonal ox eye above .
The side fronts have three windows that are similar to those on the east side and are located between the corner to the front and the transept. The cellar below has three sliding windows, which consist of two rows with six double-hung panes each. The cruise ship, which spans only one yoke, has another pointed arch window to the east and west. On the south side there is a group of windows with three openings. On the north side of the cruise ship, escape doors are let into the walls, which are located on both sides of the arched window at its end. Between the transept and the apse there is an annex with a half-roof on the south side. This has a cross-arched window on the south side.
The west facade has an entrance to the basement and a window with three openings, which, like the other windows, consist of colored panes assembled in a diamond pattern. It is flanked by cross-arched windows, another octagonal ox-eye sits in the rear triangular pediment where the apse protrudes. The basement is made of field stones assembled with mortar . The frames of the windows, the main entrance and a side entrance on the south side are bricked with bricks .
interior
The sanctuary is now sparsely furnished. Gently curved pews with snail-shaped armrests and recessed rear panels flank the central aisle that leads to the altar. The wooden floor is now covered with carpet; the walls, which are otherwise plastered, are made of tongue and groove wood paneling . Above this, the wooden beams and rafters that support the roof are freely visible. At the end of the corridor the altar stands on a pedestal. There is also a wooden lectern on top of it with details in the classical style.
Walls divide smaller spaces in the transept and apse. Smaller prayer rooms are housed in the transept. On the north side is a stained glass window with a pious motif. In the area of the entrance to the southern part of the transept, there is an elaborately carved wooden tower with religious motifs on which the organ pipes sit.
In the basement there are ancillary rooms that serve secondary functions. This includes a kitchen, toilets, rooms for Sunday school and a community hall. The boiler installed in 1902 is still in place, but the rest of the interior has been modernized. The rooms are lined with linoleum , the walls are plastered and provided with imitation wood paneling, the ceilings are suspended .
history
In the early 1830s, members of the Oliver Street Baptist Church (now the Mariner's Temple ) in Lower Manhattan split from that congregation. They rented a hall on Broadway in 1832 , in which the young pastor William R. Williams read mass and planned to build their own church building.
Two years later they signed a lease for a piece of land on Amity Street, on which the original Amity Street Baptist Church was built in 1834 . This temple-like building in the classical style had six Ionic columns on its front facade . The architect Samuel Dunbar is believed to have modified his earlier design for the Thirteenth Street Presbyterian Church . Neither of the two buildings has survived; the lectern in today's church, the classicistic details of which suggest that it may have been an early work by Minard LaFever , is probably the only remnant of the original structure.
Lower Manhattan's growth and transformation in the early industrial era quickly made it less attractive to churches, and many parishes sold their properties in the area to use the proceeds to rebuild further north. The church on Amity Street was converted into a stable , and the congregation settled in new lot on 54th Street . Because the name was no longer geographically correct, the congregation was renamed Mity Baptist Church .
The current church building was probably built as a chapel or an additional building around 1860 on this property. His Picturesque style, highlighted by the original tongue and groove wood paneling, was a common style in the construction of many North American Protestant churches at the time. Richard Upjohn , an Episcopalian immigrant from England popularized the neo-Gothic style for larger churches of his denomination. Baptists tended towards rather modest, low-key styles, which were used in numerous variations.
After leading the ward for more than half a century, Williams died in 1885. He left his final message to the ward : “Pray and trust, love the Lord and serve the Lord fervently and deeply. He will never leave those who put their trust in him, never. ” This legacy is written on a wooden plaque that is still in the possession of the parish.
Leighton Williams took over from his father. In 1893 he bought the 200 acre property from the town of Marlborough for a retreat and from then on held annual meetings of the Brotherhood of the Kingdom , a group founded with Walter Rauschenbusch , an advocate of social gospel . After his wedding to his wife Nellie, he came here several times. The New York City congregation lost membership and eventually sold its property there. The chapel remained on the property and Williams had it dismantled in 1905 and taken to Ulster County, where it was rebuilt in its current location. He named the ward Amity Chapel of the Amity Baptist Church , which soon became one of the largest Sunday schools in the area.
In 1914 Williams sold the building and land to the Church's trustees for $ 4,250 ($ 112,000 at today's prices). The church had the building modernized, added the transepts on the outside and installed electrical lighting. In 1915 the Brotherhood held their last retreat in the building. Sometime after 1919 - a photograph from that year shows the building with its original façade made of tongue-and-groove-clad boards - the building received its current disappearance, with the old facade cladding presumably serving as lining wood.
In 1927, the trustees transferred ownership of the church to the Amity Foundation , which included the Williams family and other local Baptists. In 1961, most of its founding members had died and church property fell into neglect.
Members of the Moulton Memorial Baptist Church in nearby Newburgh reorganized the church and foundation in 1962. After services were held again for a few years, another period of inactivity followed. In 1973 the foundation re-established the church, this time under the name Chapel Hill Community Church . In 1987 it took its current name Chapel Hill Bible Church . By the 1990s, the parishioners had fallen below ten and inactivity was again threatened, but the parish's membership recovered.
See also
supporting documents
- ^ National Register Information System . In: National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service . Retrieved March 13, 2009.
- ↑ United States Geological Survey . Wappingers Falls quadrangle - New York - Dutchess, Ulster and Orange Cos. [Map], 1: 24,000, USGS 7½-minute quadrangles. Retrieved May 9, 2011.
- ↑ a b c History ( English ) Chapel Hill Bible Church. 2008. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k William Krattinger: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Chapel Hill Bible Church ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . Archived from the original on October 19, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 7, 2011.
- ↑ Fr. Benedict Groschel: I Am With You Always: A Study of the History and Meaning of Personal Devotion to Jesus Christ for Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians . Ignatius Press , San Francisco , California 2010, ISBN 9781586172572 , p. 446.
