St. Bartholomew's Church in the City of New York

pub_fac_smith_st_bartholomews_churchSt. Bartholomew’s, the grand Episcopal church located on Park Avenue at 50th Street, is one of New York’s most distinctive buildings”a jewel in a monumental setting,” as Christine Smith calls it. One of the few low, spacious buildings remaining on an avenue crowded with office towers, the church is a prime example of eclecticism in architecture. In this book, Smith examines the history of the parish, the checkered history of the church’s construction, the background and ideas of the architect, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, and the various elements of its design and decoration, including a discussion of its historical sources. Goodhue based the structure on San Marco, the 11th-century Venetian church, and incorporated elements of both Romanesque and Gothic architecture. Among the many outstanding features it now includes are beautiful mosaics by Hildredth Meiere and the Stanford White portal dedicated to Cornelius Vanderbiltall splendidly captured in the accompanying photographs.

Oxford University Press