St. Mark's Episcopal Church (Hoosick Falls)
The St. Mark's Episcopal Church is a church on Main Street in Hoosick Falls , New York in the United States. The building was built from bricks in the middle of the 19th century . The community itself was founded in 1833.
Building
The architect Henry Dudley planned the building according to the principles of the Episcopal Church built by the Cambridge Camden Society , based on the English rural parish churches, which at the time were considered ideal for churches of this denomination. The use of brick instead of real stone blocks is uncharacteristic. The architect was presumably hired by the local industrialist Walter A. Wood ; Wood was a member of the ward.
The church stands in a small lot on the west side of Main Street, just south of a public park and a short distance from the post office across the street. The church is two blocks south of downtown des Villages . The church is set back from the street and is separated from it by a lawn and a hedge. There are tall trees around the church. A driveway south of the building leads to a small parking lot at the rear. At the far edge of the property is a remnant of the cast iron fence that once enclosed the entire property.
The church itself consists of three parts, the nave , the free-standing bell tower and the parish hall built on the south side. The first two are made of brick, the parish hall is a plastered wooden frame construction.
The nave has a slate roof with steep gables and buttresses at the corners. The western facade includes a small, closed entrance porch with a similar roof and buttresses. There are two lancet windows on both sides, with a rose window above it. A small cornice runs along the verge , two corbels sit at the top of the gable. The main entrance has double wooden doors with decorative hinges made of wrought iron and is surrounded by a pointed arch made of limestone .
The side facades have since been covered by later extensions. Two lancet windows are left on the south side and dormer windows are on both sides. The annex on the north side allowed its aisle and has lancet windows arranged in pairs and a pent roof. The transept with lancet windows and a roof similar to that of the main nave is at the rear. The one-and-a-half-story parish hall is built on the south side. This also has a steep gable roof . It is decorated with wooden moldings on the windows.
Narrow lancet windows also let the light into the one-story connecting structure between the church and the bell tower. This has four floors, all of which are marked by rows of sandstone stones . The buttresses at the corners are two stories high. One of these has an entrance that is similar to the main entrance, the second has further lancet windows to the east and west, the third contains a clock and the fourth has a ribbed ogival opening with the chime made by the Meneely bell foundry . The gable roof is pierced by wind whistles. There is a cross on it.
Inside the sanctuary has a hammer-beam vault with beams made of dark- stained wood. The walls are plastered and the pews are original. The equipment is completed by brass eagles and stained glass from different periods. The altarpiece is made of oak, the altar itself is made of green marble and originally comes from another church.
history
The parish of St. Mark's was founded in 1833. The first services were held in the local schoolhouse and later in the meeting house that is now the Hoosick Falls Baptist Church. Two years after it was organized, the congregation had enough members to build its own church.
Walter A. Wood, who later became the largest employer in town with his factory for agricultural machinery , played an important role in the construction of the church. He regularly visited Troy , the county seat of Rensselaer County, and was therefore familiar with the work of the architect Henry Dudley there, such as St. John's Episcopal Church (now a contributing property to the Central Troy Historic District ) or some of the buildings in Oakwood Cemetery . Dudley also designed and built the now-defunct Woods home in the Tudor Revival on the slope of the mountain behind the church.
Dudley was an immigrant from England and a member of the New York Ecclesiological Society. Its members advocated that the design of the Episcopal church buildings should be based on the rural parish churches of England, which were felt to be more harmonious with the rural places than the white neoclassical church buildings that dominated American church architecture at that time. They also demand simplicity, since the particularly striking design of a church building is not necessary for the fulfillment of its function. Most of the churches designed by ecclesiologists therefore have steeply erected roofs and clearly defined separations between the various functional rooms.
The only unusual aspect of St. Mark's about other Dudley buildings is the material used, as he used brick instead of stone. The reasons are not known, it is possible that stone in Hoosick Falls was not available in sufficient quantities at the time, so that economic reasons led to the use of bricks.
Construction of the nave began in 1858 and was completed with the consecration of the church two years later. Dudley also designed the later additions, the north nave and transept, which were added in 1865. In the following two decades the carillon was added to the tower and the altar windows were installed. In 1880 the church was renovated without any changes to the design. Ten years later the choir was enlarged. The last significant addition was the construction of the meetinghouse in 1912–1913, nearly twenty years after Dudley's death. In the mid-1920s, what was originally the only room on the ground floor was divided into classrooms. Otherwise the church has remained unchanged since then.
Several additions and renovations to the original building were made in the decades after it was built, most notably the construction of a community hall at the beginning of the 20th century. The church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000 .
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d Peter Shaver: National Register of Historic Places nomination, St. Mark's Episcopal Church ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . November 2009. Retrieved November 14, 2009.
Coordinates: 42 ° 53'59 " N , 73 ° 21'0" W.