Abroad in New York
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Though his name is famous, we sometimes forget what a great architect James Renwick Jr. was. Born in New York in 1818, his father was a Columbia professor and one of the city’s leading intellectuals. Renwick’s mother, Margaret Brevoort, hailed from a socially prominent family. James Sr. and Margaret’s brother Henry were among Washington Irving’s closest friends. Renwick entered Columbia when he was only 12 and later married Anna Aspinwall, one of the richest heiresses in America. Architecture was Renwick’s hobby.
Renwick often is classed as a Gothic revivalist. His first commission, Grace Church, opened in the same year as Richard Upjohn’s Trinity Church, and the men’s names are forever linked.Yet two more different men would be hard to imagine. Unlike Upjohn, Renwick was an aesthete. His works include masterpieces of Gothic revival, like St. Patrick’s Cathedral; of French Second Empire, like the Renwick (formerly the Corcoran) Gallery in Washington, D.C., and of “Ruskinian Gothic,” like St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn Heights. Like Upjohn, Renwick helped pioneer the Romanesque revival. His most famous such work is the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.Another example is St. Stephen’s Church, on 28th Street between Third and Lexington Avenues, one of the unsung gems among New York buildings.
Renwick’s vertically elongated Romanesque facade is a superb piece of side-street church architecture, despite the loss over the years of many of its ornamental flourishes, such as its many finials. Opened in 1854, in the early years of the development of its Rose Hill neighborhood, St. Stephen’s boasts a lofty interior that was extended to 29th Street in 1866, in accord with Renwick’s original design, as St. Stephen’s became New York’s largest Catholic parish.
The church was adorned with murals by the Italian painter Constantino Bru midi. Some 45 separate images, including a spectacular chancel mural, these are among the most exciting unexpected sights in the city. Brumidi executed these works simultaneously with his magnificent murals in the U.S. Capitol, where he’d been hired by the Capitol’s engineer and construction overseer, Montgomery Meigs, to adorn the rotunda of Thomas Walter’s dome, among other spaces. Brumidi’s works at St. Stephen’s are executed in a masterful Baroque idiom that is not “revival” work but rather is in the direct lineage of the Italian Baroque tradition in which Brumidi was trained at the Accademia di San Luca.
Under executive director Eva-Marie Lassiter, our Lady of the Scapular and St. Stephen’s (as the church has been known since 1990) is raising funds for a continuing restoration of Brumidi’s murals. These include his trompe l’oeil wall patterns that were, incredibly, painted over some time ago. It is hard to think of a worthier restoration project in Manhattan today. Church interiors aren’t designated as landmarks, and the archdiocese has scared us recently with its sometimes cavalier attitude toward its artistic treasures. However, given Benedict XVI’s enthusiasm for the Baroque, and his belief in the centrality of the arts to Catholic tradition, the St. Stephen’s restoration might be seen not just as a worthy project but as a worthy mission.
