SSOH Tour: First Presbyterian Church

509 Prendergast Avenue,Jamestown NY 14701

23 July, 2022

Description

First Presbyterian Church is an impressive church edifice located at the corner of Prendergast Avenue and Fifth Street in Jamestown, New York. The famous medievalist architect Ralph Adams Cram designed the church in 1924. Constructed of buff brick and limestone, the building features elegant dentils, classical moldings, and arched corbel tables. An imposing bell tower, rising over the transept to a height of 95 feet, enhances the city’s hillside skyline with its decorative checkerboard pattern, open belfries, and seven-foot bronze cross surmounting the pyramidal roof. Inspired by the early Christian churches of Northern and Central Italy, Cram’s design features a striking wheel-style rose window patterned after the window at Santa Maria Maggiore in Tuscany. The exterior of First Presbyterian Church features a dwarf gallery and a decorative Lombard-style porch. Stone carvings of early Christian symbols, including peacocks, lions, and doves, ornament the front facade. Inside, the raised chancel features a columnar choir screen made of four types of marble and a delicately carved wood beam. The vibrant colors stenciled on the wood trusses over the nave and side aisles are painted in a geometric pattern like the ceiling at San Miniato in Florence. Boston-based artist Harry Wright Goodhue crafted the two stained-glass windows in the apse under Cram’s close supervision, including “Christ in Benediction” in the center. The unique bronze light fixtures hanging in the nave are especially beloved by members of the church. First Presbyterian Church is a celebration of local craftsmanship and the city’s once-thriving furniture manufacturing industry. Local associate architects Ellis Beck and Norman Tinkham oversaw construction of the church by the Warren Construction Company, also of Jamestown. Following Cram’s designs, local craftsmen carved the wooden pulpits, pews, narthex screen and organ screens in black walnut. The church’s exceptional acoustics and fine organ by Buffalo-based Herman Schlicker make the church a popular venue for organ and choir concerts.