Gospel Tabernacle Church Building

 office building, commercial building

6-story office/commercial building originally completed in 1888 as the Gospel Tabernacle Church, inset from the street, with the surrounding structures on West 44th Street and 8th Avenue housing a missionary training college and a bookstore. The church flourished in the early half of the century, but by the mid-1990s, it was abandoned and in a state of decay. It was revitalized as a pizzeria by entrepreneur Madeline Castellotti in 1997, to designs by Andrew Tesoro. Toward the rear of the space, the lower inner structure is topped with an eight-sided dome; the huge stained glass ceiling was preserved, and quietly survives as one of the city’s biggest.

The 6-story wings surround the inner former-church structure wrap around the corner building. The north facade on 44th Street is clad in red brick above a 2-story commercial storefront, which is divided into two halves. The east half is largely faced in black-painted limestone, with a ribbed metal section at the east end, above wood planks, which has a red gated doorway, occupied by Sammy's House of BBQ restaurant. There is a small, single-window above this at the 2nd floor. The right side has a double-height opening above the wood-plank storefront, divided into four narrow window panes, split into upper and lower sections by a signboard. The west half of the base is faced in grey pre-cast stone with light scoring marks. There is a double-height storefront with a door to the left, and two recessed bays at the 2nd floor, each with a pair of narrow windows. The piers angle outward at the tops, supporting a projecting grey cornice capping this side of the base. At the far west end there is a small, 1-story extension with entrance doors covered by a rounded canvas canopy extending out over the sidewalk. This extension is topped by a small metal-railed balcony and a vertical sign mounted to the side facade, for John's Pizzeria, which occupies the west half of the base and the main former-church space behind it.

At the upper floors the west half has three windows on each floor, round-arched at the 3rd floor. The east half is basically the same, except that the two inner bays project forward, and the end bays is spaced farther apart. Flat brownstone bands cross the top of the 3rd, 5th & 6th floors, and make up the spandrels between the windows of the 4th-5th floors. The windows are smaller at the top floor, and divided by rounded columns instead of brick piers. The far eastern bay is slightly recessed, and rounded, curving back to the side, with a window set at a 45-degree angle in a red terra-cotta surround; there is horizontal banding on this 1-story rounded bay, and a band across the top is decorated with rosettes.

The west facade on the avenue is also clad in red brick above a 2-story limestone base. At the ground floor the end bays have wide pointed-arch openings; the south one has the entrance to the upper floors, while the north one now has metal doors leading into the kitchen of the pizzeria. At the 2nd floor these bays have single-windows with stone sills, pointed-arch tops, and angular eyebrow lintels, similar to (but smaller than) those below at the main arches. The middle space has modern plate-glass storefronts.

The upper floors have six bays of single-windows, with the end bays spaced farther apart and the middle bays slightly recessed. The windows have stone sills and brick lintels. A brick corbel course at the middle bays supports a small stone cornice, surmounted by a brick roof parapet that is stepped up at both ends. The parapet has stone coping and the ends are each decorated with a small stone square. The ground floor here is occupied by 8th Ave. Gifts, with Harlem Spirituals: Gospel & Jazz Tours on the 2nd floor.