St. Michael's Church, New York City

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St. Michael’s Church, an Episcopal church founded in January 1807, is located at Amsterdam Avenue and 99th Street in New York City’s Upper West Side. The current building designed by Robert W. Gibson, contains stained-glass windows and mosaics by Louis Comfort Tiffany, It is considered one of the city's landmarks and is known for its wide range of programs and for its congregation’s wide ethnic, socio-economic, and sexual orientation diversity. The church draws people from all areas of New York City and its surroundings.

The church building also is noted for its two tracker-action pipe organs built in 1967 by the Rudolph von Beckerath Organ Company (Hamburg, Germany), and its fine acoustics.

In addition to traditional Anglican services, St. Michael’s has services and prayer groups influenced by the emerging church movement.

1 Impact
2 Architecture
3 See also
4 Sources and External Links

[edit] Impact

For most of its existence, and continuing today, St. Michael’s has had an impact on the physical and social development of New York City. St. Michael’s founded at least six New York churches, including All Angels’ Church, located first in Seneca Village, in what is now Central Park, and later on West End Avenue. After the Civil War, St. Michael’s provided space and financial support for the free Bloomingdale Clinic, District Nurse Association, Day Nursery and Circulating Library.

Today, the church has five choirs; more than 100 children are involved in the Christian Formation Program. Social ministries include work for the hungry and the homeless, the ill and their caregivers, the unemployed and their dependents. Both church and parish house provide space for extensive parish activities and major not-for-profit community organizations.

Since the early 1990’s, St. Michael’s has been partnered with St. Michael’s, Promosa, in Matlosane, South Africa and, most recently, with the Diocese of Madras in the Church of South India.

[edit] Architecture

Virtually unique among upper Manhattan’s houses of worship, St. Michael’s Church has been located on exactly the same site for two centuries.

The first building was as a simple white frame structure with a belfry, built for pewholders of Trinity Church, Wall Street who sought a more convenient place to worship near their summer homes overlooking the Hudson River. At that time the City of New York was confined to the southern tip of Manhattan. Among the congregation was the widow of Alexander Hamilton. A second, larger, church building was in use from 1854 to 1891. The third and current building, influenced by the Romanesque and Byzantine styles and designed to seat 1,500 people, was dedicated in December, 1891.

In 1895, Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) was commissioned to design and install the seven great lancet windows representing St. Michael’s Victory in Heaven, along with a marble altar. Twenty-five years later, Tiffany’s overall design scheme was completed with the Chapel of the Angels reredos mosaic depicting the Witnesses of the Redemption. From the 1890’s through the 1920’s, parishioners donated stained glass windows of eclectic styles.

In 1997 St. Michael’s Church became a Designated Historical Building on the National Register of Historic Places and the New York State Register of Historic Places.