St. Peter's Episcopal Church (Peekskill, New York)
Encyclopedia
St. Peter's Episcopal Church of Peekskill
, New York, United States, is located on the north edge of the city's downtown. It is a three-building complex of stone Late Gothic Revival buildings on a half-acre (2,000 m²) dating to the late 19th century and added onto at successive later dates.
The church itself was established in nearby Van Cortlandtville before the American Revolution
as Old St. Peter's Church
. Its current home is the third building on the site, designed by architect Richard M. Upjohn
in an architectural style
recalling the churches styled after English country parish churches his father
had designed early in his career. In 2003 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
.
. Pugsley Park is to the east. The land slopes gently upward to the north.
, church house and parish house. All are considered contributing
to its historic character and the National Register listing.
The church's nave
is a one-story rectangular structure of coursed
granite
. It has a gable
d roof with slate shingles
and a parapet
ed west gable. Two shed-roofed additions run the length of the north and south profiles. The lychgate and bell tower, both of which open to North Division Street and were added later, are to the north and south respectively.
The lychgate has a wooden gabled top. The 16-foot (4.8 m) square tower is faced in similar stone to the nave, and has Gothic louver
ed vents below its crenelated roofline and stepped buttress
es at the corners from the bottom of the vent to ground level. Double doors on the west side open to steps down to the street.
Inside, the nave follows a traditional linear plan with a central aisle between wooden pew
s. Wainscoting rises to the ceiling and its exposed truss
es, all darkened by finishings. The chancel
has a tiled floor and vaulted ceiling finished with wainscoting. It has a marble
altar and reredos
. There are 12 triple-lancet
stained glass
windows on the walls, and a rose window
behind the altar.
Greek Revival
house sided in brick laid in Flemish bond
trimmed in cast iron
. An Italianate
addition to the north has a two-story bay window
with intermediate cornice
. There is also a one-story brick wing on the rear.
The front of the main block has frieze
-band vents at the roofline below a bracketed
cornice
. The main entrance has a classically-inspired
surround with transom
light. Inside it retains much of the original plaster finishing and decoration, including eared door and window surrounds.
Behind it along Howard Street, at the northeast corner of the property, is the Frost Memorial Parish House, a two-story Tudorbethan
five-bay–long hall
with stucco
walls and half-timbers. Its roof, gabled with a half-hip
at the south and gable-on-hip at the north (front) end, is shingled in slate. A similar flat-roofed one-and-a-half–story addition projects from the south. The main entrance at the north end is a two-story symmetrical projecting bay with raised parapet
.
Its first floor interior is an open meeting space with linoleum
tile flooring, plaster walls and imitation exposed ceiling timbers. The second story is divided between church offices and day-care classrooms.
era, and its first church
was consecrated
in 1767 and remains in use today. In 1838 Ward Howard, a resident of what was then the village of Peekskill, offered the church land behind the house he had built a few years earlier. A wooden Gothic Revival church was built on the site.
In 1882 the church acquired Howard's house and converted it into a parsonage. Seven years later, in 1889, the congregation voted to replace the church on the land he had donated to it. They chose a design by Richard M. Upjohn, the son of the late Richard Upjohn
, an English immigrant
who had designed many notable churches and houses. The younger Upjohn's design recalled the simple Gothic English country parish churches that Upjohn and other architects of the mid-century had advocated and built for Episcpopal congregations in the Northeast
and elsewhere, under the influence of Ecclesiogical movement in church architecture Unlike other neo-Gothic government and institutional buildings of the late Victorian era, decoration is minimal.
The tower, possibly an unbuilt element of Upjohn's original design, was added in 1905, after his death. In the 1910s, the wing was added to the rear of the Howard House. The parish house was built in 1913. Hobart Upjohn, Richard's son, designed the interior renovations that were made in 1926. The reredos, painted by a local Episcopalian nun, was added in 1934. The last alteration to the buildings was the wing added to the parish house in 1964. It is architecturally sympathetic, but due to its recent construction is not considered to contributing.
Peekskill, New York
Peekskill is a city in Westchester County, New York. It is situated on a bay along the east side of the Hudson River, across from Jones Point.This community was known to be an early American industrial center, primarily for its iron plow and stove products...
, New York, United States, is located on the north edge of the city's downtown. It is a three-building complex of stone Late Gothic Revival buildings on a half-acre (2,000 m²) dating to the late 19th century and added onto at successive later dates.
The church itself was established in nearby Van Cortlandtville before the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
as Old St. Peter's Church
Old St. Peter's Church
Old St. Peter's Church and Old Cemetery, also known as St. Peter's Church of Cortlandt is a historic Episcopal church and cemetery at Oregon Road and Locust Avenue in Van Cortlandtville, Westchester County, New York. The church was built in 1766 and measures 28 feet by 36 feet. It is a wood frame...
. Its current home is the third building on the site, designed by architect Richard M. Upjohn
Richard M. Upjohn
Richard Michell Upjohn, FAIA, was an influential American architect, co-founder and president of the American Institute of Architects.-Early life and career:...
in an architectural style
Architectural style
Architectural styles classify architecture in terms of the use of form, techniques, materials, time period, region and other stylistic influences. It overlaps with, and emerges from the study of the evolution and history of architecture...
recalling the churches styled after English country parish churches his father
Richard Upjohn
Richard Upjohn was an English-born architect who emigrated to the United States and became most famous for his Gothic Revival churches. He was partially responsible for launching the movement to such popularity in the United States. Upjohn also did extensive work in and helped to popularize the...
had designed early in his career. In 2003 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
.
Property
The church property is located at the southeast corner of the intersection of Howard and North Division streets, just outside the boundary of the Peekskill Downtown Historic DistrictPeekskill Downtown Historic District
The Peekskill Downtown Historic District is located in the downtown section of that city in the U.S. state of New York. It includes the along Main, Division, South, Park, Bank, Brown, First and Esther streets, and Central and Union avenues, near where those streets intersect...
. Pugsley Park is to the east. The land slopes gently upward to the north.
Church
There are three buildings on the property: the church hall with lychgateLychgate
A lychgate, also spelled lichgate, lycugate, or as two separate words lych gate, is a gateway covered with a roof found at the entrance to a traditional English or English-style churchyard.-Name:...
, church house and parish house. All are considered contributing
Contributing property
In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing resource or contributing property is any building, structure, or object which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic district, listed locally or federally, significant...
to its historic character and the National Register listing.
The church's nave
Nave
In Romanesque and Gothic Christian abbey, cathedral basilica and church architecture, the nave is the central approach to the high altar, the main body of the church. "Nave" was probably suggested by the keel shape of its vaulting...
is a one-story rectangular structure of coursed
Course (architecture)
A course is a continuous horizontal layer of similarly-sized building material one unit high, usually in a wall. The term is almost always used in conjunction with unit masonry such as brick, cut stone, or concrete masonry units .-Styles:...
granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
. It has a gable
Gable
A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns. Thus the type of roof enclosing the volume dictates the shape of the gable...
d roof with slate shingles
Roof shingle
Roof shingles are a roof covering consisting of individual overlapping elements. These elements are typically flat rectangular shapes laid in rows from the bottom edge of the roof up, with each successive higher row overlapping the joints in the row below...
and a parapet
Parapet
A parapet is a wall-like barrier at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony or other structure. Where extending above a roof, it may simply be the portion of an exterior wall that continues above the line of the roof surface, or may be a continuation of a vertical feature beneath the roof such as a...
ed west gable. Two shed-roofed additions run the length of the north and south profiles. The lychgate and bell tower, both of which open to North Division Street and were added later, are to the north and south respectively.
The lychgate has a wooden gabled top. The 16-foot (4.8 m) square tower is faced in similar stone to the nave, and has Gothic louver
Louver
A louver or louvre , from the French l'ouvert; "the open one") is a window, blind or shutter with horizontal slats that are angled to admit light and air, but to keep out rain, direct sunshine, and noise...
ed vents below its crenelated roofline and stepped buttress
Buttress
A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall...
es at the corners from the bottom of the vent to ground level. Double doors on the west side open to steps down to the street.
Inside, the nave follows a traditional linear plan with a central aisle between wooden pew
Pew
A pew is a long bench seat or enclosed box used for seating members of a congregation or choir in a church, or sometimes in a courtroom.-Overview:Churches were not commonly furnished with permanent pews before the Protestant Reformation...
s. Wainscoting rises to the ceiling and its exposed truss
Truss
In architecture and structural engineering, a truss is a structure comprising one or more triangular units constructed with straight members whose ends are connected at joints referred to as nodes. External forces and reactions to those forces are considered to act only at the nodes and result in...
es, all darkened by finishings. The chancel
Chancel
In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar in the sanctuary at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building...
has a tiled floor and vaulted ceiling finished with wainscoting. It has a marble
Marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...
altar and reredos
Reredos
thumb|300px|right|An altar and reredos from [[St. Josaphat's Roman Catholic Church|St. Josaphat Catholic Church]] in [[Detroit]], [[Michigan]]. This would be called a [[retable]] in many other languages and countries....
. There are 12 triple-lancet
Lancet window
A lancet window is a tall narrow window with a pointed arch at its top. It acquired the "lancet" name from its resemblance to a lance. Instances of this architectural motif are most often found in Gothic and ecclesiastical structures, where they are often placed singly or in pairs.The motif first...
stained glass
Stained glass
The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...
windows on the walls, and a rose window
Rose window
A Rose window is often used as a generic term applied to a circular window, but is especially used for those found in churches of the Gothic architectural style and being divided into segments by stone mullions and tracery...
behind the altar.
Outbuildings
Howard House, the former parsonage, is located on the northwest corner of the lot. It is a two-story, three-bayBay (architecture)
A bay is a unit of form in architecture. This unit is defined as the zone between the outer edges of an engaged column, pilaster, or post; or within a window frame, doorframe, or vertical 'bas relief' wall form.-Defining elements:...
Greek Revival
Greek Revival architecture
The Greek Revival was an architectural movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in Northern Europe and the United States. A product of Hellenism, it may be looked upon as the last phase in the development of Neoclassical architecture...
house sided in brick laid in Flemish bond
Brickwork
Brickwork is masonry produced by a bricklayer, using bricks and mortar to build up brick structures such as walls. Brickwork is also used to finish corners, door, and window openings, etc...
trimmed in cast iron
Cast iron
Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...
. An Italianate
Italianate architecture
The Italianate style of architecture was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. In the Italianate style, the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian Renaissance architecture, which had served as inspiration for both Palladianism and...
addition to the north has a two-story bay window
Bay window
A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room, either square or polygonal in plan. The angles most commonly used on the inside corners of the bay are 90, 135 and 150 degrees. Bay windows are often associated with Victorian architecture...
with intermediate cornice
Cornice
Cornice molding is generally any horizontal decorative molding that crowns any building or furniture element: the cornice over a door or window, for instance, or the cornice around the edge of a pedestal. A simple cornice may be formed just with a crown molding.The function of the projecting...
. There is also a one-story brick wing on the rear.
The front of the main block has frieze
Frieze
thumb|267px|Frieze of the [[Tower of the Winds]], AthensIn architecture the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Even when neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon...
-band vents at the roofline below a bracketed
Bracket (architecture)
A bracket is an architectural member made of wood, stone, or metal that overhangs a wall to support or carry weight. It may also support a statue, the spring of an arch, a beam, or a shelf. Brackets are often in the form of scrolls, and can be carved, cast, or molded. They can be entirely...
cornice
Cornice
Cornice molding is generally any horizontal decorative molding that crowns any building or furniture element: the cornice over a door or window, for instance, or the cornice around the edge of a pedestal. A simple cornice may be formed just with a crown molding.The function of the projecting...
. The main entrance has a classically-inspired
Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...
surround with transom
Transom (architectural)
In architecture, a transom is the term given to a transverse beam or bar in a frame, or to the crosspiece separating a door or the like from a window or fanlight above it. Transom is also the customary U.S. word used for a transom light, the window over this crosspiece...
light. Inside it retains much of the original plaster finishing and decoration, including eared door and window surrounds.
Behind it along Howard Street, at the northeast corner of the property, is the Frost Memorial Parish House, a two-story Tudorbethan
Tudorbethan architecture
The Tudor Revival architecture of the 20th century , first manifested itself in domestic architecture beginning in the United Kingdom in the mid to late 19th century based on a revival of aspects of Tudor style. It later became an influence in some other countries, especially the British colonies...
five-bay–long hall
Hall
In architecture, a hall is fundamentally a relatively large space enclosed by a roof and walls. In the Iron Age, a mead hall was such a simple building and was the residence of a lord and his retainers...
with stucco
Stucco
Stucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...
walls and half-timbers. Its roof, gabled with a half-hip
Hip roof
A hip roof, or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope. Thus it is a house with no gables or other vertical sides to the roof. A square hip roof is shaped like a pyramid. Hip roofs on the houses could have two triangular side...
at the south and gable-on-hip at the north (front) end, is shingled in slate. A similar flat-roofed one-and-a-half–story addition projects from the south. The main entrance at the north end is a two-story symmetrical projecting bay with raised parapet
Parapet
A parapet is a wall-like barrier at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony or other structure. Where extending above a roof, it may simply be the portion of an exterior wall that continues above the line of the roof surface, or may be a continuation of a vertical feature beneath the roof such as a...
.
Its first floor interior is an open meeting space with linoleum
Linoleum
Linoleum is a floor covering made from renewable materials such as solidified linseed oil , pine rosin, ground cork dust, wood flour, and mineral fillers such as calcium carbonate, most commonly on a burlap or canvas backing; pigments are often added to the materials.The finest linoleum floors,...
tile flooring, plaster walls and imitation exposed ceiling timbers. The second story is divided between church offices and day-care classrooms.
History
St. Peter's was founded during the ColonialColonial America
The colonial history of the United States covers the history from the start of European settlement and especially the history of the thirteen colonies of Britain until they declared independence in 1776. In the late 16th century, England, France, Spain and the Netherlands launched major...
era, and its first church
Old St. Peter's Church
Old St. Peter's Church and Old Cemetery, also known as St. Peter's Church of Cortlandt is a historic Episcopal church and cemetery at Oregon Road and Locust Avenue in Van Cortlandtville, Westchester County, New York. The church was built in 1766 and measures 28 feet by 36 feet. It is a wood frame...
was consecrated
Consecration
Consecration is the solemn dedication to a special purpose or service, usually religious. The word "consecration" literally means "to associate with the sacred". Persons, places, or things can be consecrated, and the term is used in various ways by different groups...
in 1767 and remains in use today. In 1838 Ward Howard, a resident of what was then the village of Peekskill, offered the church land behind the house he had built a few years earlier. A wooden Gothic Revival church was built on the site.
In 1882 the church acquired Howard's house and converted it into a parsonage. Seven years later, in 1889, the congregation voted to replace the church on the land he had donated to it. They chose a design by Richard M. Upjohn, the son of the late Richard Upjohn
Richard Upjohn
Richard Upjohn was an English-born architect who emigrated to the United States and became most famous for his Gothic Revival churches. He was partially responsible for launching the movement to such popularity in the United States. Upjohn also did extensive work in and helped to popularize the...
, an English immigrant
English American
English Americans are citizens or residents of the United States whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in England....
who had designed many notable churches and houses. The younger Upjohn's design recalled the simple Gothic English country parish churches that Upjohn and other architects of the mid-century had advocated and built for Episcpopal congregations in the Northeast
Northeastern United States
The Northeastern United States is a region of the United States as defined by the United States Census Bureau.-Composition:The region comprises nine states: the New England states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont; and the Mid-Atlantic states of New...
and elsewhere, under the influence of Ecclesiogical movement in church architecture Unlike other neo-Gothic government and institutional buildings of the late Victorian era, decoration is minimal.
The tower, possibly an unbuilt element of Upjohn's original design, was added in 1905, after his death. In the 1910s, the wing was added to the rear of the Howard House. The parish house was built in 1913. Hobart Upjohn, Richard's son, designed the interior renovations that were made in 1926. The reredos, painted by a local Episcopalian nun, was added in 1934. The last alteration to the buildings was the wing added to the parish house in 1964. It is architecturally sympathetic, but due to its recent construction is not considered to contributing.