Saint Bartholomew's Church

Saint Bartholomew’s Church is located on Park Avenue and 50th street. The congregation was founded in 1835 in the Bowery section of Manhattan. A second location was finished in 1876 at 44th and Madison Avenue. Supported by the Vanderbilt family, the church opened a large parish house on 42nd street during the large immigration of the late 19th century, ministering to large numbers of new arrivals, according to a Saint Bartholomew tourist guide.

Bertram Goodhue designed the current church in a Byzantine style. According to NYC Architecture, the style is “…free and simplified Byzantine design with heavier French Romanesque portal retained from the earlier building. A pleasantly eclectic mixture.” The foundation stone of Goodhue's original design, a vast, unified barrel-vaulted space, without side aisles or chapels and with severely reduced transepts, was laid in May 1917 and the construction was sufficiently far along for the church to be consecrated in 1918, according to Wikipedia.

Goodhue’s office associates,in partnership as Mayers, Murray and Philips, altered the church design during construction after Goodhue's sudden, unexpected death in 1924. They inserted dome, tile-patterned on the exterior and with a polychrome Hispano-Moresque interior dome, which substituted for the spire that had been planned but never built. Completed in 1930, the church contains stained-glass windows by such artists as Reynolds, Francis and Rohnstock, J. Gordon Guthrie, Lamb Studios, Owen Bonwit, C.E. Kempe, Ernest Lastman, Henry Wynd Young, and Hildreth Meiere. The church features mosaics by Meiere. Saint Bartholomew's, completed by 1930 at a cost of $5,400,000, is one of the city's landmarks, according to Wikipedia. Saint Bart's is known for a wide range of programs. It draws parishioners from all areas of New York City and surroundings.

For more detail on the history on the history of Saint Bartholomew, see the church website.

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