Author Description

St. Bartholomew's, the grand Episcopal church located on Park Avenue at 50th Street, is one of New York's most distinctive buildings--"a jewel in a monumental setting," as Christine Smith calls it. One of the few low, spacious buildings remaining on an avenue crowded with office towers, the church is a prime example of eclecticism in architecture and houses one of the finest sculptures outside of Florence, the Stanford White portal dedicated to Cornelius Vanderbilt.In this book, beautifully illustrated with 116 photographs--including 28 stunning original color plates by the Italian photographer Raffaello Bencini--Smith examines the history of the parish, the checkered history of the church's construction, the background and ideas of the architect, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, and the various elements of its design and decoration, including a discussion of its historical sources. Goodhue based the structure on San Marco, the eleventh-century Venetian church, and incorporated elements of both Romanesque and Gothic architecture. Among the many outstanding features it now includes are beautiful mosaics by Hildreth Meire as well as the White portal--all splendidly captured in the accompanying photographs.This book is must reading for all who love St. Bartholomew's and will especially appeal to anyone interested in architectural history and the history of the city of New York.