Marble Collegiate Church

USA / New Jersey / West New York / West 29th Street, 1
 church, movie / film / TV location

The Marble Collegiate Church, founded in 1628, is one of the oldest continuous Protestant congregations in North America. The church at 5th Avenue and 29th Street was built in 1851-54, and designed by Samuel A. Warner in Romanesque Revival style with Gothic trim. The facade is covered in light-grey Tuckahoe marble, for which the church, originally called the Fifth Avenue Church, was renamed in 1906.

Symmetrical in plan, the central tower is flanked at its base by tall double-windows, with octagonal turrets at the angles, terminating in spires with carved finials. The doorway in the center of the tower is set in a richly-carved recessed arch carried on colonnettes with ornamented capitals. The tower, rising from a square plan, is divided vertically into four sections: belfry, clock section, lantern, and octagonal-shaped spire topped by a weathervane. At the angles there are massive, graduated buttresses surmounted by octagonal turrets with pinnacles having neatly molded cornices and carved finials.

At the eastern end of the church, on each side, an entrance doorway opens into the spacious first-floor lobby. The side elevations consist of five attractive round-arched windows set between heavy buttresses. At the western extremity a lecture room is flanked by octagonal towers, one at each angle of an imposing gable with cornice and copings, vaunting a pinnacle at the center. A street-level arched arcade connected to church to the former office building to the west, now demolished and redeveloped into a park.

The church is widely famous as a center for Norman Vincent Peale's and Dr. Arthur Caliandro's popular sermons. Peale served as senior minister from 1932-1984. Following Peale's fifty-two year ministry, Dr. Arthur Caliandro served 25 years as the fifth senior minister of Marble Church.

www.marblechurch.org/
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Coordinates:   40°44'44"N   73°59'13"W

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  • Photo #1: public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.
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