Church of the Blessed Sacrament

 Neo-Gothic (architecture), Roman Catholic church, 1917_construction

Neo-Gothic style Roman Catholic church completed in 1917. Designed by Gustave Steinback, the 2-story church is combined with a 7-story school of the south part of the lot, and a rectory to the west of the main facade of the church. The parish was established in 1887, with its first church a red-brick Italianate building just west of the current church.

The new church is clad in limestone, and its main facade on 71st Street is dominated by an immense 32-foot rose window above a grand pointed-arch entrance, with the exterior embellished with lavish sculpture and carvings. Up a wide a receding set of steps, there are three openings each with wood-and-glass double-doors and transoms below the large pointed-arch that is lined with multiple moldings featuring rows of rosettes. While the Church of the Blessed Sacrament’s French Gothic Design has a steel frame, its roof is supported through domes and tile arches fabricated by the Guastavino Fireproof Tile Co.

Over the main doors of the church, within the arch, is a large relief modeled after a Raphael fresco in the Vatican, The Triumph of the Eucharist (The Disputation of the Sacrament). At the top of the lunette is God the Father, and below, within the large aureola, is Christ with Mary, St. John the Baptist and the Holy Spirit. The consecrated host over the altar is the link between the Church Triumphant (in heaven) and the Church Militant (on earth) and is the focus of the composition. It is contemplated by, on the semicircle of clouds of the Church Triumphant, Peter, Adam, John the Evangelist, David, Stephen and Jeremiah on the left; and on the right, Judas Macabeus, Lawrence, Moses, Matthew (or James the Greater or the Less), Abraham and Paul. On the concentric earthly semicircle is a crowded Church Militant: to the left, Fra Angelico, the architect Bramant, Gregory the Great, Julius II, Jerome and, to the right, Ambrose, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Innocent III, Bonaventure, Sixtus IV and Savaronla. The two lower strips of figures of unidentified clerics and laity are not in Raphael’s original.

The exterior statues in the upper towers and to the sides of the Rose Window are unidentified, but, to the left of the steps as you enter, are Philip Neri (the founder of the Oratorians, the order of Cardinal Newman), Francis de Sales (the humane post-Reformation bishop of Geneva), John Vianney (the Cure of Ars and patron of parish priests), John the Baptist de la Salle (the founder of the Christian Brothers); and to the right, Alphonsus Ligouri (Redemptorist priest and renowned moral theologian), Francis of Assisi (founder of the Franciscans), Charles Borromeo (post-Reformation cardinal and bishop of Milan) and Vincent de Paul (French “apostle of charity” and founder of the Sisters of Charity). Directly above are Mary, Queen of Heaven and Christ the King.

Above and behind where the arch comes to a point, lined with crockets, is the rose window. The beautiful tracery of the rose window's design is featured in the exterior, while the inside explodes in color from the stained glass. Flanking the main entries, the pointed-arch, and the rose window are two slender towers which devolve into four slender pillars supporting steep pyramidal roofs and each enclosing a statue. Matching towers rise above the end wings of the facade, which have secondary entrances at the base, with much smaller pointed-arches. The Saints in the tympana (the space within the arches) over the left and right entries are the Dominican Thomas Aquinas (the Angelic Doctor) and the Franciscan Bonaventure (the Seraphic Doctor).

Above the rose window the facade terminate in a large gable flanked by another set of slender towers capped by spires. The gable has three narrow slit windows and is lined along its upper edge by crockets, with a cross at the peak. Along the lengthy east and west sides of the church are six large pointed-arched bays with stained glass. The south ends joins with the school building. The Arclight Theater is located on the lower level of the church.

Adjoining it on the west is the rectory. At its ground level it has three shallow-arched bays. The east one has an iron gate, behind which are steps down to a recessed, shallow-arched doorway with wooden double-doors; above this, still recessed inside the bay, is an arched double-window. The west bay has a matching double-window, only not recessed, and below it is a small, shallow-arched basement window with an iron grille. The middle bay has black metal-and-glass infill, divided into three upper panes, three middle panes, and two sidelights of leaded-glass, with a wooden door centered at the bottom. Topping the ground floor is a stone railing with Gothic tracery. Recessed behind this, the upper floors on the east side have a wide bay of four windows at the 2nd & 3rd floors, each with an upper transom pane; between the two floors are spandrel panels with spiral trefoils designs inscribed in circles. The west end of the facade at the upper floors has an angled bay with a single-window, and another single-window at the projecting end bay, also with upper transoms and spandrels. The 4th floor also has single-windows at the west end, where it is capped by a conical slate roof with copper framing. The east side has a double-window topped by a gable breaking the steep-sloped slate roof.

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hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015034804636?urlappend=%3Bseq...