Manor Community Church

 church, Eclectic (architecture)

Dutch Flemish Revival-style church completed in 1874 as the Manor Chapel of the South Reformed Dutch Church, which was expanded in 1907 and given an altered facade by Samuel Edson Gage. When the South Church disbanded, the building was taken over by the Classis of New York in 1914, and has been the unaffiliated Manor Community Church since 1923. In 1961 construction of an enormous apartment complex of 10 buildings was initiated - The Penn Station South Houses. Blocks of Victorian-era buildings from 9th Avenue to 8th Avenue, from 24th Street to 30th Street were demolished for the new structures and parks.

The church is clad in variegated tan Roman brick on the front facade, which is roughly split into two halves. The east half is dominated by a rose window at the 2nd floor, with three pointed-arch windows below, all with banded, tan stone enframements. The roof line here has a prominent Flemish gable topped by a finial.

The east part of the west half has the main entrance, with a low arch over wooden double-doors that are flanked by buttresses reaching partway into the 2nd floor, where they frame another pointed-arch window, this one with some tracery. The doorway is approached by a set of steps, with a iron gate breaking the low brick wall in front of the facade. An illuminated metal cross is mounted above the entrance. Higher up, the tallest point of the church consists of a belfry with a pair of small windows above a cornice carried on two scrolled brackets. A smaller cornice is surmounted by a square brick panel flanked by quarter-circles, all framed in tan stone, with a final rounded gable on top. The west end of the west half has an arched basement entrance set low in the facade (behind a smaller gate). The 1st floor has a double-window, and the 2nd floor has two single-windows, with tan stone surrounds and green wooden framing. At the top is a sloped shingle roof with a small double-window dormer in green iron that is topped by a scrolled finial. A chimney rises higher at the west end.

The side elevations are clad in plain, parged brick, as they previously abutted other buildings. There are some pointed-arch windows at the rear, on both floors.

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