In the city of Troy, NY sits a church of sedately dignified gray stone. Enter within, and there's a treasure for both the senses and the spirit, a symphony of light and intricate Gothic elegance in the service of worship. If the name Tiffany suggests only jewelry or lamps to you, prepare for a revelation.
I visited it on December 8, 2013 during the city's Victorian Stroll. Follow below the Orange Omnilepticon, and I'll do my best to share the experience with you.
The church in question is
St. Paul's Episcopal Church at 58, 3rd Street in Troy, NY. It has gone through several iterations since its beginning in 1804. The current one dates back to the
Gilded Age in the 1890's, when Troy was one of the major cities of America. According to the
church history,
This was the beginning of the brilliant interior we worship in. It happened that Dr. Enos, rector at that time, had just returned from a glorious holiday touring the Gothic churches of southern Europe. After consulting with a civil engineer, an architect, and a builder, the church fathers were persuaded to engage the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, then in its heyday, whose interest in Sicilian-Gothic was especially keen, to design the new interior. Among Tiffany's experts was J.A. Holzer, an artist renowned for his mosaic work as well as stained glass. The East window is one of his masterpieces. His creative work is also evidenced in the baptistery, where exuberant mosaic figures light up an otherwise dark corner of the church. The Tiffany windows cast subdued brightness on pulpit and lectern, woodwork and jeweled lamps. Other windows, by Cox and Sons of London, the Lamb Studio of New Jersey, and a Boston firm, relate harmoniously to those of Tiffany's Holzer.
The
spectacular results earned the church a place on the National Register of Historic Places - one of many to be found in
Rensselaer County, NY. Nearly every aspect of the interior is the product of the Tiffany Company, one of only 4 surviving churches that can make that claim according to the
wikipedia article, and it is judged to be the best.
A few technical notes first. The photos in this diary were taken with an iPhone 4 and a Nikon Coolpix point and shoot digital camera. Some of them were stitched together into panoramas using a phone app called AutoStitch with some further editing in iPhoto and Photoshop. Resolution has been reduced so this diary won't take forever to load. A few photos were taken using flash; most were taken using available light - and there's the part that made it a real challenge.
By its nature, photographing stained glass is difficult. It's a question of balancing the light coming through the glass, which can be all kinds of colors and intensities with the light falling on it from the other side, with or without flash. The light outside the church as you can see from the photo above was an overcast afternoon gray; inside a number of incandescent bulbs. A number of decorative elements in the church are made of highly reflective materials and incorporate colored glass. I've done my best to capture what was there, but there's no match for the human eye in a situation like this, and the windows are an ever changing pageantry as the light outside changes. That being said, let's begin.
Here's a view of the interior, taken from a balcony above the entrance. Note the hanging lamps, the columns, the rafters - and of course the windows.
Here's a closer look at the ceiling - the arches, trusses, beams are amazing. The decorative elements on the ceiling between them are an added feature. The longer you look, the more detail there is to be found.
Just to make things interesting, the pitch of the ceiling does NOT match the pitch of the actual roof. This makes for some interesting drainage problems. The person who was giving a tour of the church while I was there mentioned that if anyone hit the Mega Millions jackpot, they'd greatly appreciate $200,000 for a new roof….
The hanging lamps above the pews are worth a look all by themselves. While others might have been happy with a single design, the Tiffany company came up with at least three variations.
There's one additional hanging lamp, suspended between the pulpit and the lectern at the front of the church. The two views are with and without flash - notice how different the background looks depending on the lighting.
Let's look at the area in the back of the church surrounding the baptismal font. The amazingly intricate structure looks like an incredible piece of wood sculpture. In fact, according to the tour guide, it's actually paper máché painted to look like wood - and apparently that was not uncommon. A look up at the canopy over the font shows how elaborate the entire piece is.
….The lectern at the front of the church is an intricate work of metal. Pictures with and without flash show how the details stand out depending on the lighting.
Well, I figure this is enough for a start. I'll be focusing on the windows in Part Two. They are spectacular enough to deserve a diary all to themselves.
Fri Dec 13, 2013 at 4:21 AM PT: UPDATE: Thank you Community Spotlight and everyone else who republished this. I'll try to have Part Two up tonight or Saturday at the latest, and link to it here.
UPDATE: And Part Two is now up, with some stained glass marvels for your consideration.