Church
St. Luke's is a one-and-half-story asymmetrical cruciform building faced in Schenectady bluestone in an ashlar pattern with Ohio sandstone trim. It is over a hundred feet (30 m) in length and 60 feet (20 m) wide. Two porches extend from the south profile, a main entrance in the middle of the nave and a secondary one in the transept. There is another porch, pent-roofed, on the north transept. An organ and robing room is attached to the north side of the chancel.
The gabled roof is covered in a variety of materials, mostly cement-asbestos shingles, with some areas of slate and metal. A frame bell cote topped with cast iron cross rises from the west end. The roofline is further pierced by a stone chimney on the north transept and several English Decorated Gothic stone crosses at junctions on the east end. All windows are either lancet or round-arched, with some having additional trefoils. The stained glass was done by Louis Comfort Tiffany's firm and the British glaziers Bell & Almond. Above the main entrance is a bronze lamp with a stone medallion of a bull, the symbol of St. Luke.
The interior walls are plaster applied over an interior brick face, with vertical beadboard and molded chair rail complemented by a similar cornice at the joint between the walls and ceiling. The slip pews are made of oak with tre- and quatrefoil carvings at the ends. The floors in the center and side aisles are laid in a polychrome glass pattern, with carpet covering the area under the pews. There is a brass dedication plaque on the west wall.
Open stained pine trusses spring from corbels along the walls frame the ceiling. They are complemented by sandstone at the arches between the building sections and surrounding the windows and doors. The nave is lit by hanging lamps. In the chancel the bishop's throne, sedilia, prayer desk and stalls are all oak like the pews. The font is of Aubigny stone on a sandstone shaft.
Below the church is its basement. It remains largely unfinished, as it was when the church was built, and unused.
Read more about this topic: St. Luke's Episcopal Church (Beacon, New York), Church Complex
Famous quotes containing the word church:
“Midnight has come and the great Christ Church bell
And many a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls’ Night.
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost’s right....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“When the Revolutionaries ran short of gun wadding the Rev. James Caldwell ... broke open the church doors and seized an armful of Watts’ hymnbooks. The preacher threw them to the soldiers and shouted, “Give ‘em Watts, boys—give ‘em Watts!””
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? And Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh!
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?”
—Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)