Hyde Park Dutch Reformed Church
The Hyde Park Dutch Reformed Church is a church building on US Highway 9 in central Hyde Park , New York in the United States and is north of the US Post Office Hyde Park and the intersection with Market Street in the center of the city. It is a complex of several buildings on a plot of around 8000 m² .
The origin of the community goes back to the year 1789. It was formally organized within the Dutch Reformed Church three years later . The main building was built in Federal Style in 1826 . It was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993 with the cemetery, rectory, and lecture hall .
description
There are five buildings and the church cemetery on the plot, which is a flat, grassy plot with some tall trees. Three of the buildings and the cemetery are considered contributing .
church
The church itself is a two-storey wooden post construction with three bays , on a slightly free-standing stone base. It is covered with horizontal boards. The gable roof is covered with shingles made of tar paper . A four-story church tower is on the west side. At the northeast corner, the roof is interrupted by a brick chimney.
A simple cornice marks the eaves and runs around the whole building. At the front, the middle yoke of the building protrudes and thus forms the base of the church tower. A double door made of red wooden panels is located in each of the yokes. It is surrounded by fluted pilasters that end with a cornice. Above each, there is a window with a semicircular skylight on the second floor . On the attic there are decorative round light windows, which also correspond to round, perforated air slots on both sides of the church tower.
The north and south sides of the church have set-back stained glass windows, four on the north side and three on the south side. The window surrounds and window sills are made of wood. There is also a small entrance on the south side.
The pews inside are arranged around a central aisle that leads to the raised chancel, which is flanked by the organ , in the background there is a pillared beam with side pilasters. A wooden staircase leads to the gallery, which is supported by round Doric wooden columns, a frieze decorates the edge of the gallery. The ceiling is made of hammered sheet metal. Most of the interior is in its original condition.
Other buildings and cemetery
To the north of the church is the rectory, built a few years later, the main wing of which is constructed in a similar way in terms of shape and material. There is also a two-story west wing with a surrounding porch, the flat roof of which is supported by turned posts. The interior is original.
The lecture hall is located south of the church. It is a one-story building, the sides of which are also covered with boards and the corners of which are studded with pilasters. A simple cornice with a frieze forms the eaves. There is a triangular air inlet in the east gable. The main entrance on the west side has a vestibule with a roof with a triangular gable supported by pilasters at the corners. A modern wooden door is surrounded by decorative elements. A side wing extends on the north side of the building.
To the west and south of the church is the associated cemetery. There are more than one hundred grave monuments made of sandstone , granite and marble , the time of which spans two centuries. The oldest graves date from 1790. The cemetery art used ranges from simple skulls in the older graves to the motifs that were common in the 19th century, such as urns and the planting of weeping willows in newer graves.
A community house connects the eastern end of the church with the rectory, and there is also a tool shed on the property. These two structures are built in a similar architectural style, but are more recent and are therefore not contributing structures.
history
Hyde Park got its name before the American War of Independence , but had only a few residents shortly before the war. After the war, residents of a small settlement called Stoutenburgh's Landing found they needed a church. They built a unified church for all faiths. It was agreed that the congregation, whose membership was large enough to maintain its own structure, would receive the structure. As a result, the Dutch Reformed Church in Hyde Park was recognized as an independent parish in 1792 and received the church. Luke Stoutenburgh, one of the landowners in the area at the time, made 2025 m² available to the south of the church so that the church could be expanded.
The new church was named Reformed Church of Stoutsburg after the local population decided in 1803 to name the settlement that way. In 1817 the place took the name of the Town Hyde Park, which led to the renaming of the church. Eight years later the church had become too small for the community, and so the old building was torn down in 1825 to make way for the new building, which was completed a year later. The church is less ornate than other federal style buildings in the Hudson Valley due to its religious use.
In 1833 the church acquired the land north of the church building and built the rectory on it. Two years later the church was even 5.2 m eastwards expanded and today's altar of mahogany fitted to another church in New York City had donated. Since then, the outside of the building has not been changed.
Church records indicate that the youngest contributing element, the lecture hall, was added before 1858. In contrast to the church and the rectory, this building was built in the neoclassical style, which had meanwhile replaced the Federal Style as the preferred architectural style in the United States. As part of the last major renovation of the church, the Odell action organ was added in 1885 . To accommodate the instrument, one of the windows on the south side had to be covered.
The community center was built around 1960. At the beginning of the 21st century, a parishioner began restoring the organ. Parts of it were sent to Maryland to be tuned, and an artist from North Carolina repainted the pipes.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d e f John Bonafide: National Register of Historic Places nomination; Reformed Dutch Church, Parsonage and Lecture Hall . New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . January 1993. Archived from the original on October 18, 2012. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 28, 2009.
- ↑ a b c History ( English ) Hyde Park Dutch Reformed Church. Retrieved on May 28, 2009. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Web links
Coordinates: 41 ° 47 ′ 31 ″ N , 73 ° 56 ′ 10 ″ W.