LISTSERV - BULLAMANKA-PINHEADS Archives

....and "on Fifth" does not equal "off Fifth"; remember this is The Exacting Listserv, where just a few inches can mean the difference between a tree blowing over on Mary's driveway and ice water running through your underpants.

Everyone here should drop everything and go up to see Heavenly Rest (yes, Episcopalian, you can just cross your arms over your chest at the altar if you don't want to drink out of the common cup), one of the best churches in NYC, ever, a wonderful streamlined thing out of the Goodhue office, with lots of unexecuted Lee Lawrie sculpture on the exterior which gives it an art deco feel. The interior is just high soaring undecorated limestone, an ecclesiastical Hoover Dam, which for many years the congregation tried to soften up with tacky pisco-love-Jesus banners. These were banished in a brilliant renovation by Allen Harbinson, who also made these fascinating choir stalls, I guess I would say Charles Rennie MacIntosh has a gay marriage with Louis Tiffany and an affair with Hector Guimard.

The congregation has (so far) wisely desisted from erasing all traces of a nearly disastrous 1990? fire, leaving a full limestone arch over the organ fire openly spalled and broken (although I think they cleaned the smoke off). At the risk of inciting JCallan to riot, I LIKE THE RUINED LIMESTONE.

IN 1991 the vestry of the Church of the Heavenly Rest, at 90th Street and
Fifth Avenue, told the architects Gerald Allen and Jeffrey Harbinson to plan for
a restoration that would take 20 years -- or longer. The designers were not
disappointed. "You have a lot of time to think about it," Mr. Allen said.

Now the church's newly refinished doors and intricate hardware, with a
surprising silver and bright red finish, are drawing stares from passersby. It
is the latest episode in the ongoing connoisseur-quality restoration of one of
Manhattan's most magnificent and inventive churches.

The southeast corner of 90th and Fifth was vacant in 1901 when Andrew
Carnegie built his blocklong mansion, now the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, just to the
north. Carnegie, who became rich from steel and railroads, also bought the
vacant land on the north side of 91st Street to protect his own site. But the
property on the south corner of 90th Street remained undeveloped, covered with
billboards and a ramshackle lemonade stand.

Carnegie must have given frequent thought to that corner, and in 1917 he paid
over $1.7 million for it -- just after a sign was posted that read "For sale --
without restrictions." He might have been thinking of Henry Phipps, who had a
big mansion at 87th and Fifth, declined to buy the empty land to the north --
and was then unpleasantly surprised when the apartment house at 1067 Fifth
Avenue went up next door in 1915.

Carnegie had no clear plan for the corner -- he just didn't want a tall
building blocking his light, with residents peering down into his garden. He
died in 1919, and in 1923 his widow, Louise, planned a group of 11 co-op town
houses for the site but did not go ahead.

In 1926, the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, then at Fifth Avenue and
45th Street, came shopping for a new site. Mrs. Carnegie sold the church the
corner for $1 million, with restrictions through 1975 that the land be used only
for a Christian church no higher than 75 feet, exclusive of steeples.

The church hired the architects Mayers, Murray & Phillip, successors to
Bertram Goodhue, one of America's most sensitive and influential designers, who
designed St. Bartholomew's Church on Fifth Avenue and who died in 1924. They
developed a design for a giant limestone mass in the neo-Gothic style, with
bursts of sculpture by Malvina Hoffman, Lee Lawrie and other artists. The church
opened in 1929 at a final cost of $3.2 million, seating 1,050, with the twin
innovations of a sound system and indirect lighting.

On the inside, the architects gave every pew an unobstructed view of the
altar. The resulting wide span, and the high, nearly plain stone walls, produce
a vast nave. George Chappell, the architecture critic for The New Yorker at the
time, admired the gold stars and gold ribbing on the ceiling and praised the
clever use of mortar joints to add to the sense of soaring height -- the joints
are wide on the flagstones on the floor, medium on the walls and small on the
vaulted ceiling, making it appear even farther away than it is.

The finishes marry modern materials with delicate artistry. The glazed screen
behind the entry doors is a dramatic work in Monel metal with gilded steel. The
door hardware, of nickeled steel with Chinese red highlights, is astonishing.
Every detail in the church came from the designer's hand -- nothing was a
formula, or left to chance.

Over two-thirds of the ambitious sculpture program was never executed. In
1928 the artist Janet Scudder said she withdrew from a commission for a
life-size "Madonna and Child" because the church had reduced it from 5-feet-4 to
4-feet-7. In reply, Dr. Henry Darlington, the rector, said: "Did you ever have
anything to do with artists? One day she wanted the statue one size, and the
next day she wanted it another."

The stock market crash of October 1929 was probably the chief obstacle to
completion, and the streamlined blocky forms that were meant to be carved give
the church an abstract, modernistic quality that many have admired. The inside
strikes some churchgoers as cold, especially those who expect a church with lots
of paneling and hangings. But the smooth, uncompromising masonry of the Church
of the Heavenly Rest, especially after a recent cleaning, is as majestic as a
1930's dam.

THE church now has a congregation of 647 households, and has spawned several
well-known organizations, including the Canterbury Choral Society, the York
Theater Company and what is now called The Day School, a coeducational private
school at the church.

When Mr. Allen and Mr. Harbinson were hired in 1991, the plan was for a
long-term renovation that included fixing leaks and electrical and ventilation
difficulties as well as space problems. The scope was enlarged in August 1993
after a fire consumed the organ and choir area and blackened the interior. The
flames popped off great chunks of stone from the arches; these have not yet been
replaced and still offer a dramatic view as striking as the interior itself.

Now, six years into the restoration program, Mr. Allen says the church has
spent about $6 million and has nearly caught up with decades of deferred
maintenance. His firm's work has been a delicate balance of understanding the
original design but creating a new one where necessary, all with the luxury of
time to consider and change opinions. The architects took five years to consider
a new placement for the altar, and they are still considering the relocation of
the Monel screen at the front.

Coming in the next few months are new choir stalls of oak with trim, and
candlesticks of polished and gilded steel in verdigris with silver highlights. Other plans include installing new chancel lighting to let the rose window float
in the shadows, and removing the plastic sheets -- which mask the delicate stone
tracery -- from the stained glass windows on the outside.

More complicated is a proposal for 16 hanging lanterns in the nave, which
could either compromise or emphasize the majesty of the space. Mixed in with
these are practical things like mechanical systems and masonry work.

Mr. Allen says the church is about two-thirds finished with its sanctuary,
and one-third finished with its extensive support spaces. The typical New York
City restoration proceeds all at once in a hurried manner, without much
contemplation. This renovation is a gentle, reflective evolution.