Church of the Heavenly Rest | |
---|---|
Location | 1085 Fifth Avenue, New York City |
Country | United States |
Denomination | Episcopal Church (United States) |
Website | heavenlyrest.org |
History | |
Founded | 1865 |
Architecture | |
Heritage designation | National Register of Historic Places, 1921 |
Architect(s) | Mayers, Murray & Phillip |
Style | Neo-Gothic style |
Completed | 31 March 1929 |
Administration | |
Diocese | Diocese of New York |
Clergy | |
Bishop(s) | Matthew Heyd |
Rector | Rev. Kate Malin |
Assistant priest(s) | Rev. Margaret Rose, Rev. Robert M. Pennoyer III, Rev. Dr. Meredith Hawkins |
Curate(s) | Rev. Cindy Stravers |
Laity | |
Director of music | Janet Yieh |
The Church of the Heavenly Rest is an Episcopal church located on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 90th Street, opposite Central Park and the Carnegie Mansion, on the Upper East Side of New York City. The church is noted for the architecture of its building, its location on Museum Mile, its outreach, thrift, music and arts programs, and some of its congregation members.
In 2020, it reported 1,866 members, but no figures for attendance or plate and pledge income.
The church was founded in 1865 (officially established in 1868) by American Civil War veterans, with the assistance of the Reverend Robert Shaw Howland. It was meant as a memorial to soldiers who had died in the Civil War. By 1900, the church had amassed close to 1000 members. The church was originally located on Fifth Avenue and 45th Street before moving to its present site. [1]
The land for the current site was sold to the church in 1926 by Louise Whitfield Carnegie, Andrew Carnegie's widow. Carnegie purchased the site in 1917 for $1.7 million shortly after a sign was erected reading "for sale without restrictions"; his ownership prevented apartment house development there that would intrude on his mansion's surroundings, but the site remained undeveloped with only a few billboards and a lemonade stand on one of the city's most expensive addresses. Its subsequent sale to the church carried the restrictions that the land could only be used "for a Christian church no higher than 75 feet, exclusive of steeple" through 1975. [2]
The limestone church was designed in the neo-Gothic style by the firm Mayers, Murray & Phillip, successors to Bertram Goodhue. Goodhue died before the first stone was laid. Mayers, Murray & Phillip took over construction. [3] It opened on Easter 1929, seating 1,050, at a cost of $3.2 million. Sculpture was to be executed by Malvina Hoffman, Lee Lawrie, and other artists. [2] The architecture and sculpture combined neo-Gothic styles with Art deco details. [1] However, over two-thirds of the sculptural program was never executed; sculptor Janet Scudder withdrew from a commission in 1928 after it was downsized. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 ended other work, and the blocky limestone facade was retained without sculpture. [4]
Innovative design features included unobstructed views of the altar, indirect lighting and a high-tech sound system. [2] The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021. [5]
The church has a number of choirs, including boys' and girls', a mixed adult choir, and a bell choir. For its patronal feast, which is All Saints' Day, the hymns "For All the Saints" and "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God" are commonly sung.
The funeral of Chester A. Arthur, former President of the United States, was held at the church in 1886, [6] and the ashes of the actress Gloria Swanson were interred there in 1983. [7]
The following have served as Rectors of the Church of the Heavenly Rest: [8]
Two of the Rectors, Herbert Shipman and Matthew Heyd, left the Church of the Heavenly Rest to become Bishop of New York.
The church is featured in a scene in the 1997 film The Devil's Advocate starring Keanu Reeves. In the film, Kevin finds his wife Mary Ann sitting on a bench in the church, where she reveals her naked body to be covered in cuts and bruises, accusing Milton (Satan) of raping her. [9]
Lee Oscar Lawrie was an American architectural sculptor and an important figure in the American sculpture scene preceding World War II. Over his long career of more than 300 commissions Lawrie's style evolved through Modern Gothic, to Beaux-Arts, Classicism, and, finally, into Moderne or Art Deco.
Saint Thomas Church is an Episcopal parish church of the Episcopal Diocese of New York at 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Also known as Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue or Saint Thomas Church in the City of New York, the parish was incorporated on January 9, 1824. The current structure, the congregation's fourth church, was designed by the architects Ralph Adams Cram and Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue in the French High Gothic Revival style and completed in 1914. In 2021, it reported 2,852 members, average in-person attendance of 224 and $1,152,588 in plate and pledge income.
Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue was an American architect celebrated for his work in Gothic Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival design. He also designed notable typefaces, including Cheltenham and Merrymount for the Merrymount Press. Later in life, Goodhue freed his architectural style with works like El Fureidis in Montecito, California, one of three estates he designed.
Mayers, Murray & Phillip was an architecture firm in New York City and the successor firm to Goodhue Associates, after Bertram Goodhue's unexpected death in 1924. The principals were Francis L.S. Mayers,Oscar Harold Murray, and Hardie Phillip.
St. Bartholomew's Church, commonly called St. Bart's, is a historic Episcopal parish founded in January 1835, and located on the east side of Park Avenue between 50th and 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, in New York City. In 2018, the church celebrated the centennial of its first service in its Park Avenue home.
The Episcopal Diocese of New York is a diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, encompassing three New York City boroughs and seven New York state counties. Established in 1785, it is one of the Episcopal Church's original dioceses. The current diocesan bishop is the Rt. Rev. Matthew Heyd, whose seat is at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.
Churrigueresque, also but less commonly "Ultra Baroque", refers to a Spanish Baroque style of elaborate sculptural architectural ornament which emerged as a manner of stucco decoration in Spain in the late 17th century and was used until about 1750, marked by extreme, expressive and florid decorative detailing, normally found above the entrance on the main façade of a building.
66th Street is a crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan with portions on the Upper East Side and Upper West Side connected across Central Park via the 66th Street transverse. West 66th Street is notable for hosting the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts between Broadway and Columbus Avenue.
The Church of St. Vincent Ferrer is a Catholic parish in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It was built in 1918 by the Dominicans; the attached priory serves as the headquarters of the Eastern United States Province of the order. Its architecture has some unusual features: above the front entrance is one of the few statues of the Crucifixion on the exterior of an American Catholic church; and inside, the Stations of the Cross depict Christ with oil paintings instead of statuary or carvings. It has two Schantz pipe organs. The church building, at the corner of Lexington Avenue and East 66th Street in the Lenox Hill section of the Upper East Side, has been called "one of New York's greatest architectural adornments."
The Cathedral of All Saints, Albany, New York, is located on Elk Street in central Albany, New York, United States. It is the central church of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany and the seat of the Episcopal Bishop of Albany. Built in the 1880s in the Gothic style and designed by Robert W. Gibson, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Previously it had been recognized as a contributing property to the Lafayette Park Historic District, listed on the Register in 1970.
Michael Eric Marshall is a British Anglican bishop who served as the eighth Bishop of Woolwich in the Church of England from 1975 to 1984.
The Lotos Club is a private social club in New York City. Founded primarily by a young group of writers and critics in 1870 as a gentlemen's club, it has since begun accepting women as members. Mark Twain, an early member, called it the "Ace of Clubs". The Club took its name from the poem "The Lotos-Eaters" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which was then very popular. Lotos was thought to convey an idea of rest and harmony. Two lines from the poem were selected for the Club motto:
In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon
161 West 93rd Street is a building on 93rd Street in Manhattan that was once the home of the Nippon Club, a gentlemen's club for Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals.
Our Saviour New York, at 417 West 57th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, was built in 1886-87 and was designed by Francis H. Kimball in the Late Victorian Gothic style for the Catholic Apostolic Church, an English group which believed in an imminent Second Coming. In 1995, with the congregation dwindling, the church was donated to the Lutheran Life's Journey Ministries, which in 1997 rededicated it as the Church for All Nations. On April 26, 2015, the Church for All Nations held its last service. Members of the congregation still worship as All Nations Lutheran Church in a rehearsal studio at 244 West 54th Street. The church itself is now, in 2018, Our Saviour New York and is directed by lead pastor Matt Popovits and Mark Budenholzer.
St. Ann’s Church was the name of a former Roman Catholic parish church at 110-120 East 12th Street between Fourth and Third Avenues in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.
Christopher Stewart Gray was an American journalist and architectural historian, noted for his weekly column "Streetscapes" in The New York Times, about the history of New York City architecture, real estate and public improvements.
The Brick Presbyterian Church is a large congregation at Park Avenue and 91st Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. A congregation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), it is known for its Day School and music programs. It was founded as an offshoot of First Presbyterian Church. Its first building, in Lower Manhattan, opened in 1768. The Park Avenue location opened April 14, 1940.
Ermelindo Eduardo Ardolino, known as Edward Ardolino was an Italian-born American stone carver and architectural sculptor of the early twentieth century. He was the most prominent member of the Ardolino family of stone carvers. He worked with leading architects and sculptors, including architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue and sculptor Lee Lawrie. Ardolino participated in at least nine Goodhue-Lawrie collaborations including the Los Angeles Public Library and the Nebraska State Capitol. His carvings adorn a significant number of important public and private buildings and monuments, including four buildings in the Federal Triangle of Washington, D.C.
St. Mary's-in-Tuxedo Episcopal Church, otherwise simply referred to as St. Mary's-in-Tuxedo, is an active Episcopal church in Tuxedo, New York, located within the historic village of Tuxedo Park.
The Rt. Rev. Matthew Foster Heyd is an American prelate who has served as the 17th bishop of New York since 2024. He was consecrated as bishop co-adjutor in 2023, having previously served for 10 years as rector of the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City.