Second Unitarian Church (Brooklyn, New York)

According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle [Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 3rd, 1858] the Second Unitarian Church, Clinton and Congress streets in Brooklyn, New York was designed in the Anglo-Italian style and was different in its appearance from other churches in the neighborhood.

Design & construction

The building was eighty-six feet long and seventy-five feet wide in the transept. The nave was forty feet wide and the transept – thirty-five. The floor to ceiling height was twenty five feet. The masonry building was made of brick and overlaid with brown mastic. Aside from the brown mastic on the exterior, there was a “water table” line made of brown stone with wide stripe of Philadelphia faced brick on the top. The building was in the shape of the cruciform, with a low pitched roof covered with green and purple octagon slates in alternate rows – resembling a tortoise for which the church was called by some “the Church of the Holy Turtle”, however more often it was called “the Little Church on the Corner” or “New Chapel”.

In the centre of the roof was an ornate wooden ventilator, and the entire ridge of the roof was finished with the “ridge crest”. The cornice was made of Caen stone and Philadelphia brick. The building had seventeen arched, stained glass windows with the tracery made of Caen stone. Located at the north-west corner of the church was a tower that measured forty one feet. The tower was topped with a twenty-three feet tall octagonal belfry. The base of the belfry was ornamented with encaustic tiles on the face of the stonework. The roof of the tower was covered with slate tiles, with a cross above. The main entrance to the church was located at Clinton Street, through a porch, above which there was a rose-window with stained glass framed with Caen stone. Under the window was an inscription, “The truth shall make your free” – a famous quote of the church’s beloved pastor, Rev. Longfellow. Inside of the church, (see fig. 7) the walls were pearl grey. The ceiling was rose-tinted and moulded between heavy beams of open timber roof, and part of the ceiling in the apse area was azure. The church held 104 pews made from black walnut and pine and upholstered with crimson damask, they were able to seat 600 people. There were no obstructions as pillars or gallery, so the pulpit could be seen from every place in the church. To the right of the altar was a separate minister’s room “with every convenience” (Brooklyn Eagle, 2) and to the left, the organ and a place for the choir. During cold days the church was heated with furnaces. The building also contained a basement where the Sunday school and Library were located.

References