Reformed Church of Beacon | |
---|---|
Religion | |
Affiliation | Reformed Church in America |
Location | |
Location | Beacon, NY, United States |
Geographic coordinates | 41°30′23″N73°58′49″W / 41.50639°N 73.98028°W |
Architecture | |
Architect(s) | Frederick Clarke Withers |
Type | Church |
Style | High Victorian Gothic |
General contractor | J.F. Gerow, Samuel Bogardus [1] |
Completed | 1860 [1] |
Specifications | |
Direction of façade | East |
Materials | Brick |
U.S. National Register of Historic Places | |
Added to NRHP | 1988 |
NRHP Reference no. | 88001438 |
Website | |
Reformed Church of Beacon |
The Reformed Church of Beacon, originally the Reformed Dutch Church of Fishkill Landing, is a historic and architecturally-significant church in Beacon, New York. The congregation, who no longer occupies the building, claims it is the oldest church in Beacon. [2] [3] It is located on NY 9D about 0.5 miles (1 km) south of Beacon's municipal complex and downtown area and overlooks the Hudson River from a bluff.
It was designed by Frederick Clarke Withers and built in 1860 using the High Victorian Gothic style, one of its earliest uses in the United States. [4] The church and its cemetery were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. It is one of three Withers buildings in the city on the Register and a rare example of his church architecture in this style. [5]
The church and cemetery are on a 2.2-acre (8,900 m2) lot between Ferry (Route 9D) and Beekman streets. It is level and clear on the east, where the church is, but then wooded and sloped to the west, where the cemetery is. There is a parking lot to the north, and the church's former parsonage. [1]
Two and a half stories in height and seven by four bays, the church is made from red brick laid in English bond. The main entrance, two large Gothic wooden paneled doors with a small Gothic window between them, is on the east. All but one of the side bays have a large Gothic window with a buttress between them. The west elevation is fully fenestrated, and a small wing projects to south. Near it, the church's spire, a later addition, rises. [1]
Inside, a red carpet covers the wooden floor under the sanctuary's 98 oak pews. The walls are plaster, covered to a certain level with narrow vertical wainscoting. They rise to a vaulted wooden ceiling with large trusses. In the rear, behind the altar, are the pipes of the church's manual-tracker pipe organ, [1] the only one in the Hudson Valley. [3] A small gallery, presently the choir room, is off the main entrance. On the west end is a larger room, used as a Sunday school and lecture hall. It is decorated with similar materials as the sanctuary except the wood is painted white and the plaster blue. From the south side, a small kitchen and hallway offer stairs to both the basement and bell tower. [1]
The cemetery is on the section of land from just west of the church wall to near Beekman Street, downhill. Its graves date from 1813 to the early 20th century, representing the range of funerary art common from those eras. It is overgrown and in some disrepair. [1] Notable burials include Abraham H. Schenck, James Mackin and William Few who has since been reinterred at Saint Paul's Church, Augusta, Georgia.
To the north of the church is the parsonage. It is a frame building two-story building with a large addition to its own north, probably built in the mid-19th century. Due to the extensive renovation and other work on it is, unlike the cemetery and church, not considered a contributing resource to the NRHP listing. [1]
A devout Episcopalian, Withers' churches for his own faith typically followed the conservative interpretation of the Gothic English rural parish church as advocated by the contemporary Ecclesiogical movement, a philosophy most visible in his nearby St. Luke's Episcopal Church, built ten years later. But when designing for other sects, he was willing to be more flexible. His design for the Reformed Church thus was his rare use for a church of the High Victorian Gothic style which characterized most of his secular buildings, such as Eustatia, a home for St. Luke's vestryman John Monell, also in Beacon. It features extensive use of polychromy on the courses of its outer walls and the slate tiling on its broad cross-gabled roof, all common features of the style. [1] Withers' request for black brick to balance the courses could not be achieved because none had yet been locally produced. [6]
The church is an early High Victorian Gothic work in America. It shows the influence of William Butterfield's contemporary All Saints Church in London's Fitzrovia neighborhood, and writings by John Ruskin such as TheSeven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice. [1] Influential textual sources also included G. E. Street's Brick and Marble (1855) and George Gilbert Scott's Remarks (1857), which defended the use of brick and Northern Italian Gothic features especially in church building. Since his arrival in New York, Withers had never faltered from his perusal of English periodicals and new architectural literature, some likely shared by his brother, Robert J. Withers. [7]
The congregation was established in 1813 in what was then a small riverside settlement known as Fishkill Landing. A small white frame church was built on the present site. The cemetery was also dedicated and received its first body at the same time. [3] Among its earlier notable burials was William Few, Jr., a Founding Father of the United States, who was living in Fishkill at the time of his death. His body was later reinterred at St. Paul's Church in his native Augusta, Georgia. [8]
By the late 1850s the church had grown enough that a new building was necessary, and Withers was commissioned. Local carpenter Samuel Bogardus did the framing with J.F Gerow handling the masonry and bricklaying. Shortly after it opened, the Civil War began. In 1861, the church thus entertained a visiting preacher, noted abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher, who told the congregation that liberty should be for all. [1]
After the war, in the 1870s, the village and church had both grown enough that some additions and changes to the building were necessary. Wither's original rear wing was reduced from two stories to one to accommodate a new steeple, and in 1873 the entire structure was repaired and decorated. The original stone belfry was taken down in 1887 when it became unstable, and the organ, built by George Ryder, was installed in 1895. [1]
In 1907 one congregant donated the lot north of the church and the house on it for use as a new parsonage. The former parsonage was sold and moved to Beacon Street in 1911. [1] There have been no significant changes to the property since.
Beacon is a city located in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The 2020 census placed the city total population at 13,769. Beacon is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, New York Metropolitan Statistical Area as well as the larger New York–Newark–Bridgeport, New York–New Jersey–Connecticut–Pennsylvania Combined Statistical Area.
Calvert Vaux was an English-American architect and landscape designer, best known as the co-designer, along with his protégé and junior partner Frederick Law Olmsted, of what would become New York City's Central Park.
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Fishkill Creek is a tributary of the Hudson River in Dutchess County, New York, United States. At 33.5 miles (53.9 km) it is the second longest stream in the county, after Wappinger Creek. It rises in the town of Union Vale and flows generally southwest to a small estuary on the Hudson just south of Beacon. Part of its 193-square-mile (500 km2) watershed is in Putnam County to the south. Sprout Creek, the county's third-longest creek, is its most significant tributary. Whaley and Sylvan lakes and Beacon Reservoir, its largest, deepest and highest lakes, are among the bodies of water within the watershed.
The U.S. Post Office in Beacon, New York, is located on Main Street. It serves the ZIP Code 12508, covering the entire city of Beacon and some of the neighboring areas of the Town of Fishkill. It is a stone structure in the Dutch Colonial Revival architectural style built in the mid-1930s. In 1988 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places along with many other older post offices in the state.
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St. Luke's Episcopal Church is located in Beacon, New York, United States. The church complex of four buildings and a cemetery takes up a 12-acre (4.9 ha) parcel between Wolcott, Rector, Phillips and Union Streets. It was founded in 1832 as a religious school that soon became St. Anna's Church of Fishkill Landing.
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John Peter De Windt Jr., known as J. P. De Windt (1787–1870) created the Long Wharf, later known as the Long Dock, in Beacon, New York in 1815 and owned an enormous estate in Dutchess County, which was eventually broken up into the streets of Fishkill-on-the-Hudson, or present day Beacon. He was a manufacturer and investor in steamboats and railroads during the immense boom in transportation in the mid 1800s along the Hudson which linked New York City to the rest of the country. He was married to the grand-daughter of John and Abigail Adams.
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: CS1 maint: url-status (link)When Few died in 1828 at the age of 80 in Fishkill-on-the-Hudson (present Beacon), he was survived by his wife (born Catherine Nicholson) and three daughters. Originally buried in the yard of the local Reformed Dutch Church, his body was later reinterred at St. Paul's Church, Augusta, GA.
Coordinates: 41°30′23″N73°58′49″W / 41.506389°N 73.980278°W