St. Andrew's Episcopal Church (Walden, New York) - Property - Church

Church

The church's main facade faces east, towards the triangle of Orchard, Scofield and Walnut streets at the center of town. Opposite is the village's memorial to the local members of the 124th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the "Orange Blossoms", who served with distinction in the Union Army during the Civil War. The village hall is located diagonally across from it on Walnut Street.

It is a single-story brick structure with a steeply-pitched gabled roof. On the southeast side of the nave, near the front entrance, is a bell tower with a tall spire. It and the church's main roof are shingled in slate. The walls are reddish-brown brick laid in common bond. The foundation is of locally-quarried brownstone, with a datestone in the southeast corner.

Three narrow Gothic lancet windows resting on a brownstone course are evenly spaced across the front, with a roundel high above. The roofline is marked by a corbelled cornice with a metal Latin cross at the gable's apex. The main entrance, at the foot of the bell tower, has double wooden doors, each with a St. Andrew's cross in the lower corner, set in a Gothic arch surrounded with three brick courses. A louvered, recessed Gothic arch marks the bell stage of the tower, which then gives way after brief corbels to the spire, topped with another cross.

The four-bay south face, looking out on Orchard Street, has a pair of lancet windows, similar to but smaller than their counterparts on the front. It is broken by the chapel transept, where another lancet window was once bricked over. To the west of the transept is the connection to the chapel. On the north side are an identical grouping of windows and a porch which provides direct access to the nave. A tall brick chimney rises from the wall here.

Inside, the sanctuary has the pews arranged with a center aisle and two side ones along the walls. The ceiling is made of beaded wooden boards that expose the hammerbeam roof's trusses. Chamfered wooden posts rise up to it from between the lancet window pairs on either side. A carved wooden altar with Gothic motifs sits in front of the lancet windows in the west wall. In the rear are an office and robing room.

The basement is largely unfinished and used for storage. Support functions, such as a kitchen and meeting space, are handled by the rooms of the former chapel.