St. Mark's Episcopal Church (Hoosick Falls, New York)

The St. Mark's Episcopal Church is a church on Main Street in Hoosick Falls, New York in the United States. The building was built in the mid-19th century brick. The community itself was founded in 1833.

The architect Henry Dudley planned the building according to the established by the Cambridge Camden Society principles of church architecture of the Episcopal Church, according to the English rural parish churches, which were at that time as an ideal for churches of this denomination. Uncharacteristic the use of brick is to hire the right of stone blocks. The architect was probably committed by the local industrialist Walter A. Wood; Wood was a member of the community.

Several additions and renovations of the original building have been made in the decades after the construction, most notably the construction of a community center in the early 20th century. The church was incorporated in 2000 in the National Register of Historic Places.

Building

The church stands on a small plot of land on the west side of Main Street, just south of a public park and only a short distance from the post office on the opposite side of the street. The church is located two blocks south of the downtown of the Village. The church is set back slightly from the road and is separated therefrom by a lawn and a hedge. Around the church are tall trees. An access road south of the building leads to a small parking lot on the back. At the far edge of the property there is a rest of the cast-iron fence that once hemmed the whole property.

The church itself consists of three parts, the nave, the free-standing bell tower and the built onto the south side of the parish hall. The first two are built of brick, the community center is a plastered timber-frame construction.

The nave has a slated roof with steep gables and buttresses at the corners. The western facade includes a small, enclosed entrance porch with a similar roof and buttresses. Two lancet windows are located on both sides, a rose window is about. A small cornice runs along the verge, two corbels sit on top of the gable. The main entrance has double wooden doors with decorative hinges wrought iron and is surrounded by a pointed arch of limestone.

The side facades have since been covered by later extensions. Two lancet windows are left on the south side and dormers are located on both sides. The cultivation on the north side had to be aisle and has paired lancet windows and a shed roof. The transept with lancet windows and a similar roof as the main ship is located at the back. The eineinhalbstockige community house is attached to the south side. Also this has a steep gable roof. It is provided with wooden trim on the windows.

Narrow lancet can also light in the single-storey link building between the church and belltower. This has four floors, all of which are marked by rows of stones made ​​of sandstone. The brace works on the corners are two stories high. One of them has an input that is similar to the main entrance, the second has more lancet windows facing east and west, and the third includes a clock and the fourth a ribbed pointed arch opening with the bells, the bells foundry Meneely has produced. The gable roof is pierced by wind whistles. On it sits a cross.

Inside, the sanctuary has a hammer-beam - vault with beams of dark stained wood. The walls are plastered and the pews is original. To complete the outfit by brass eagle and stained glass from different periods. The altarpiece is made of oak wood, the altar itself is made of green marble and is originally from another church.

History

The parish of St. Mark's was founded in 1833. The first services were held in the local schoolhouse and later in the meeting house, which now houses the Baptist community of Hoosick Falls. Two years after the founding of the community had to build a sufficient number of members of their own church.

Walter A. Wood, who later became his factory for agricultural machines the largest employer in town, played an important role in the construction of the church. He regularly visited Troy, the county seat of Rensselaer County and was therefore the work of the architect Henry Dudley there familiar, such as the St. John 's Episcopal Church (now a Contributing Property to the Central Troy Historic District ) or some of the buildings on the Oakwood Cemetery. Dudley designed and built and the non-existent today in the Tudor Revival residence Woods on the hill slope behind the church.

Dudley was an immigrant from England and a member of the New York Ecclesiological Society. Its members were responsible for ensuring that the design of the Episcopal Church building was oriented to the rural parish churches of England, which was felt as harmonious to the rural places than the white neoclassical church buildings that dominated the American church architecture at that time. They also called for simplicity, as the most eye-catching design of a church building for the performance of its function was not necessary. Most of the designed of Ecclesiologisten churches have erected so steep roofs and clearly defined separations between the various functional areas.

The only unusual aspect of St. Mark's in terms of other buildings Dudley is the material used, as it used bricks instead of stone. The reasons are not known, may have been stone in Hoosick Falls at that time not available in sufficient quantities, so that economic reasons for the use of brick led.

The construction of the nave, which began in 1858 and was completed with the dedication of the church two years later. Dudley also designed the later additions, the northern nave and the transept, which originated in 1865. In the two following decades, the carillon was added to the tower and built the altar window. 1880, the church was renewed, without that it would have been changes in the design. Ten years later the choir was enlarged. The last significant addition was the 1912-1913 construction of the meetinghouse, almost twenty years after the death of Dudley. Mid-1920s, the original single room was divided on the ground floor in the classroom. Otherwise, the church has remained unchanged since then.