...didn't include the architect or preservation consultants for the
restoration!

Sign me,  Original Sin


                December  30, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

HEADLINE: Streetscapes: St. Jean Baptiste Church;
Restoration on Lexington Ave.

BYLINE: By  CHRISTOPHER GRAY

 BODY:
   THE scaffolding was supposed to be down for Christmas but the big limestone
towers of St. Jean Baptiste Church, at the southeast corner of 76th Street and
Lexington Avenue, are still draped in tarpaulins and staging.

   The Roman Catholic church, finished in 1914, has almost completed
restoration
of its Lexington Avenue facade, but cold weather has delayed the unveiling
until
spring.

   The congregation of St. Jean Baptiste was established in 1882 to serve
French-Canadians in Yorkville. A modest Gothic-style building with
Romanesque-style elements was completed at 159 East 76th Street in 1883.

    In 1900, the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, an order emphasizing
the
importance of the Eucharist (Holy Communion), assumed responsibility for the
parish.

   Thomas Fortune Ryan, who had made tens of millions in stock, banking,
streetcar and other operations, sometimes under shady circumstances, attended
St. Jean. One day when he was late, according to a parish history, he was
obliged to stand during mass.

   Shortly after the mass, Ryan offered to pay for an entirely new church, and
its current site was acquired. After some problems with holdout tenants, the
cornerstone was laid in 1912 for a sanctuary accommodating 1,200 people and an
adjacent parish house. Ryan was in the midst of a long alteration and
enlargement project on his mansion at 858 Fifth Avenue on which he worked with
the architects Carrere & Hastings. But he apparently did not insist that they
be
retained for the new church; he ultimately spent $600,000 on the project.

   Nicholas Serracino, who had studied in Naples and designed other Catholic
churches in New York, designed the building as a giant limestone structure
with
a temple-fronted portico and twin open towers on the Lexington Avenue front
and
a great dome over the crossing back along 76th Street.

   The steel framework for the church towered over the smaller buildings on
Lexington Avenue at the time of the cornerstone laying. The completed building
is usually described as Italian Renaissance in style, but there is also an
austerity and a modernity to it that suggests later work of the Baroque period
or even the Neo-Classic Revival of the 18th century.

   According to Andrew Dolkart, an architectural historian and specialist in
church design, the early 20th century was a time when Catholics were searching
for their own architectural style -- the Gothic had become firmly identified
with Protestant churches -- and Catholics experimented with Early Christian,
Romanesque, Renaissance, Classical, Spanish and other styles.

   The completed St. Jean Baptiste, with a dome 172 feet high, rose with an
abrupt elegance over a street of brownstones and modest flat buildings,
rather a
Fifth Avenue touch for what was emerging as a noisy subway street.

   Indeed, The New York Times quoted the Rev. Arthur Letellier as saying at
the
time that the new church "would attempt to rival St. Patrick's Cathedral."

   The church was dedicated in 1914 and soon thereafter the broad main steps
were moved back as Lexington Avenue sidewalks were widened.

   The interior was originally left undecorated -- a high, wide classical
space,
light and airy -- but was decorated and finished in the early 20's. The boxy
pews are masterpieces of varnished oak.

   SINCE its completion, the church building has remained largely
unchanged,although Lexington Avenue has moved up a few social notches with
tall
apartment houses replacing older buildings, partially obscuring the limestone
towers.

   In 1969 St. Jean Baptiste was designated a landmark.

   In 1989, some stones fell from the church onto Lexington Avenue and the
church immediately had to erect a sidewalk bridge for protection.

   This year work began on restoring the copper on the towers and cleaning and
repointing the limestone on Lexington Avenue at a cost of "several hundreds of
thousands of dollars," according to the Rev. John Kamas, pastor of the church,
which has about 1,000 congregants.

   A larger goal is to raise $3 million to repair the roof, dome and 76th
Street
facade and establish an endowment for maintenance is being raised partially
through the sale of air rights and adjacent property on 76th Street to a
private
developer for the construction of a 31-story building.

   The Landmarks Preservation Commission is now considering an application by
the developer to proceed on the project.

GRAPHIC: Photo: St. Jean Baptiste Church at 76th Street and Lexington Avenue
in
1912. (Museum of the City of New York)