Building
The church building is a two-story, three-by-five-bay rectangle sided in white clapboard. The heavy timber framing is supported by a fieldstone foundation. The moderately-pitched gabled roof is shingled in asphalt, with a single chimney near the roofline on the east side. The church is entered at the tower or south end. Unusually, this originally brought the congregation in at the sides of the altar, which was also at this end.
From the projecting central front bay, the multi-staged tower rises, interrupted only by the bracketed cornice on the front roofline. It continues to a narrow frieze with cornice and modillions. All four sides have a window, a small roundel on the front and sides and a small rectangle on the rear, overlooking the roof. Above the oculus there has traditionally been a painted clock face, set at 11:07.
The belfry above is octagonal and ornate. Tuscan columns frame panels that are alternately louvered and plain. These support a similar frieze and cornice as the one below. The final stage uses the same treatment, with all panels louvered, and the tower's cap is an octagonal dome with weathervane.
All the three front bays are filled with entrances. The main entrance is a pair of doors recessed behind fluted architraves. A fanlight surmounts the doorway, their muntins making intersecting Gothic arches. These are echoed on the side entrances.
Both sides are fully fenestrated on both stories with 20-over-20 double-hung sash windows. The rear elevation features no decorative treatment at the roofline, and one window in each story at the sides, similar to the windows along the sides.
A vestibule separates the main door from the sanctuary, while both side entrances lead directly to it. The altar is of plain wood, with some elliptical framing in the wall above paralleling a larger frame opposite that leads to the stairway to the choir loft, supported by thin octagonal columns. Simple round columns support the 10-foot–deep (3 m) second-story galleries with balustrade on either side. All walls except the front have wainscoting to the sill level; the front has shelving.
All the woodwork inside save the altar and gallery handrails is painted white. Much of it is original. The ceilings are pressed metal.
A set of stone steps from the front leads to a flagstone walkway that in turn descends a set of steep stone steps to Main Street. In the back is a small bungalow that once served as a parsonage.
Read more about this topic: Bloomingburg Reformed Protestant Dutch Church
Famous quotes containing the word building:
“Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall—which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“Notice how he has numbered the blue veins
in my breast. Moreover there are ten freckles.
Now he goes left. Now he goes right.
He is building a city, a city of flesh.
He’s an industrialist.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)