Did you notice the mix of Romanesque and Renaissance Revival styles. It is St. Michael’s Church. This historic Episcopal church stands at 225 West 99th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. We are on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in New York City.
St. Michael’s Church parish has stood here since January 1807. Back then this was the rural Bloomingdale District. The Romanesque building before you is the third church on this site. It was built between 1890 and 1891. Robert W. Gibson designed it. St. Michael’s Church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.
St. Michael’s Church is known for its Tiffany stained glass. It also boasts fine acoustics. Two tracker-action pipe organs were built in 1967. The Rudolph von Beckerath Organ Company of Hamburg, Germany created them.
Uniquely, St. Michael’s Church has been on this very site for two centuries. The first church was simple with a belfry. Trinity Church pewholders wanted a closer place to worship. They had summer homes overlooking the Hudson River. Farms surrounded them on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. New York City was smaller then. It only occupied Manhattan’s southern tip. Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton worshipped here. She was Alexander Hamilton’s widow. A second Carpenter Gothic church served from 1854 to 1891.
The current St. Michael’s Church building can seat 1500 people. It was dedicated in December 1891. The ground beneath St. Michael’s Church was once a cemetery. The builders decided to leave the graves undisturbed. Rev. Mr. Richmond the first rector is buried here. The last burial took place in 1872. An elevated railroad on Columbus Avenue led to the building of St. Michael’s. It absorbed the rural district into the growing city.
Louis Comfort Tiffany designed seven great windows for St. Michael’s in 1895. They show St. Michael’s Victory in Heaven. Tiffany also created a marble altar. Twenty-five years later Tiffany completed the Chapel of the Angels. This reredos mosaic depicts the Witnesses of the Redemption. Parishioners donated stained glass windows in eclectic styles from the 1890s through the 1920s.
The square Romanesque bell tower rises 160 feet. Tiffany studios created many works of art for St. Michael’s. Clara W. Parrish Edward P. Sperry Louis J. Lederle and Joseph Lauber assisted Tiffany. They installed two more Tiffany stained glass windows in the Chapel of the Angels. A large Tiffany mosaic sits behind the altar. Tiffany decorations include a white Vermont marble altar. You can see an altar rail a pulpit and the dome of the apse. These Tiffany features were installed between 1891 and 1920. The windows were restored in 1990. Fine Art Decoration of New York painted the interior. They chose colors from the windows and mosaics.
St. Michael’s has greatly impacted New York City. St. Michael’s founded at least six New York churches. This includes All Angels’ Church. All Angels’ was first in Seneca Village. Seneca Village is now Central Park. Later it moved to West End Avenue. St. Michael’s provided space and money after the Civil War. This was for the Bloomingdale Clinic the District Nurse Association the Day Nursery and a Circulating Library.
In 1997 St. Michael’s Church joined the National Register of Historic Places. It also became a New York State Register of Historic Places Designated Historical Building. The rectory is at the head of the former St. Michael’s Lane. The ghostly presence of St. Michael’s Lane can be seen in mid-block back alleys. It also appears in service access between apartment buildings south of 91st Street.
Now you know some of the rich history of St. Michael’s Church. Take a moment to appreciate its architecture and the stories held within its walls.