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Church of the Transfiguration (New York City, New York)

USA / New Jersey / West New York / New York City, New York / East 29th Street, 1
 church, Episcopal Church, historic landmark

The Church of the Transfiguration, also known as the Little Church Around the Corner, is an Episcopal parish church located at 1 West 29th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues in the NoMad neighborhood of Manhattan. The congregation was founded in 1848 by the Rev. Dr. George Hendric Houghton, and worshipped in a home at 48 East 29th Street until the church was built and consecrated in 1849.

The English Neo-Gothic church building is set back behind a garden, and constructed of dark red brick with brownstone trip and copper and slate roofs. The sanctuary had a guildhall, transepts, and a tower added to it in 1852, and the lych-gate, designed by Frederick C. Withers (of the firm of Vaux & Withers), was built in 1896. The lych-gate (also spelled lichgate) is a small, almost square structure carried on stone Gothic arches with a pyramid-shaped, nubby, green-copper roof. It is centered between the low, wrought-iron fences fronting the property. Past the lych-gate, a semicircular path leads through the garden to the main entrance, set in the church tower. Some of the metalwork was fabricated by Renner & Maras of Long Island City to a design by Wilfred E. Anthony.

The tower is reinforced at the corners by diagonally placed, stepped buttresses. Above the doorway, resting on a horizontal band course are three lancet windows and over each a dripstone (head mold) repeated again above the single-arched window of the 3rd tier. The tower is crowned by a small, slightly concave, peaked roof edged with freestanding Gothic ornament of metal. The four sides of the little roof each contain a small louvered dormer, and the roof curves gracefully upward to a point, surmounted by a cross. At the base of the tower and to the left are the three arched windows of the Lady Chapel, which was added in 1906. The mortuary chapel was added in 1908.

From the long line of the roof, to the right of the tower, it is evident that this is the main body of the church. The low wall of this section is divided by squat buttresses into four sections of unequal size and contains a varied arrangement of windows. The roof slopes gently over the side aisles and then rises at a steeper angle to the ridge above the nave. Small dormers serve as clerestory windows above the nave. The transept extends south from the nave ending in a small apse, and in the west wall two tall stained glass windows cut through the eaves. In the southwest corner of the transept a gabled projection with handsomely carved double-doors forms a second entrance to the church. The angle where the nave and transept meet has been extended outward to incorporate an octagonal tower, containing St. Joseph's Mortuary Chapel. This tower has on its wide face two tiers of windows; the upper ones have louvers, the lower tier stained glass. The largest window on the wide face of the tower serves as a reredos (an ornamental screen) for the chapel altar. The 8-sided grey slate roof of the tower rises to a ridge topped by a handsome iron grille and cross.

The rectory, adjoining on the west, was built in 1961, also by Frederick C. Withers. Five stories tall, its south facade is three bays wide. It is clad in brownstone, with a grey slate mansard roof at the 5th floor. The center bay of the 3rd floor has a boldly projecting bay window, framed in iron with a small sloped roof. The other windows have molded, eared lintels. Above the bracketed cornice atop the 4th floor, the mansard is pierced by three dormers with rounded pediments. Set back at the east side is a 5-sided projection, with a smaller, limestone-clad tower of bay windows connecting the corner of the projecting with the main facade of the rectory. This tower has narrow windows on its three faces, with a black wrought-iron balcony wrapping around it at the 3rd floor. At the 5th floor, there is a steep, grey slate mansard projecting from the mansard on the main eastern section. This section has two brick chimneys rising from the mansard, while the narrow southern projection has a single, peaked dormer window. The southeast-facing facet of the east section has tall single-windows at each floor, bricked-in at the 4th floor. The east-facing facet has shorter openings, and here the bottom floors have been bricked-in, while the 4th-floor window remains.

www.littlechurch.org/
archive.org/details/wroughtinmetal00renn/page/n47/mode/...
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Coordinates:   40°44'42"N   73°59'9"W
This article was last modified 3 years ago