Architectural critics, and lovers of buildings in general, may wish to consider converting to Mormonism. Unlike most of the world’s religions, which are happy to reveal the architectonic beauties of their creed even to unbelievers, the finest examples of Mormonism, its sacred temples, are open only to the faithful. Before these sites are fully consecrated, however, the public is granted a few weeks to see what they are missing, and such were the circumstances, a few years back, when I was permitted to enter the temple on Broadway and 65th Street. Though the exterior is largely undistinguished, the interior is a breath takingly beautiful stage set, a dream of immaculate white corridors and citron colored walls, of thick, soundless carpets, cut flowers, burnished brass fixtures and all the other accouterments of heaven on earth.

In the past few months, the Mormons have opened a new space in Harlem, on 128th Street and Lenox Avenue. The arrival in Harlem of a new house of worship is hardly remarkable. This part of the city, from 110th Street to about 136th, has more churches, mosques, and synagogues than any other in the five boroughs. You would have to go to Venice or Rome to find a comparable density of religious architecture. But the appearance here of a Mormon church is unexpected, since this religion only recently began to reach out to blacks and, indeed, until 1978, officially believed them to be inferior to whites and excluded them from its priesthood. All of that, one is happy to report, has been forgiven and forgotten, and the service I happened upon at 128th Street appeared to be fully integrated.

In contrast to the temple three miles to the south, the building on 128th Street and Lenox Avenue is designated a church and as such it welcomes all comers. The five-story building commands the southeast corner of its block and, like the Mormons it houses, is scrupulously square.It presents itself to the world as a flash of bright red brick, accented with pale stone at the rusticated base and, around the windows that grace the slightly recessed central sections on both Lenox Avenue and 128th Street, as triads of Romanesque arches beneath a rosette and a triangular pediment. Rising above the structure is a pointed gable that comes straight out of the 19th century and recalls to all Mormons their origins in a largely vanished rural America.At the same time, the façade pleasantly invokes the aesthetic of Christopher Wren’s London churches, with its elegant window surrounds surmounted by discrete keystones.

The interior, unfortunately, makes no effort to live up to the stylish exterior. It has all the character of the bursar’s office in some Midwestern university. One enters through standard metal doors, passes a featureless vestibule, and then heads up one floor to the room where the congregation meets. This space, though brightly illuminated, has few adornments other than hanging light fixtures and a lowly pulpit at the front, before which the congregants sit on folding metal chairs.

Like all houses of worship, the new Mormon church is, urbanistically speaking, a special event. Out of the dreary sameness of the cityscape, with its rows of houses and shops, there emerges, as though from nowhere, a bold statement of aspiring to things infinitely greater than the here and now. With its stone symbols, its often archaic vernaculars, and the uses to which it is put, the house of worship stands apart from the rest of its neighbors, even in Harlem, which has some of the city’s most distinguished building stock.

The house of worship is as different from the city’s daily fare as the mitered bishop is from the average man in the street.It should come as no surprise that, in a religion like Mormonism, where the priesthood wears simple shirts and ties, the difference between its new church and other secular buildings is not as striking as in mosques or cathedrals .But it is present all the same, and however restrained the new church may be, Harlem is the better for it.

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Speaking of houses of worship, St. Brigid’s, on 8th Street and Avenue B, was very much in the news this past week. The diocese has long been of the opinion that the building should be not merely deconsecrated, but torn down. The reasons it cites are a dwindling and aging congregation and, more important, the structural instability of the church, whose walls are crumbling.The diverse community that lives in the East Village, however, wishes to preserve it as a landmark and an ornament of the neighborhood. Last Thursday the demolition crews showed up and went to work, as did a series of local activists who held candlelight vigils, formed a human chain, and at one point even climbed to the summit of the steeple in an act of civil disobedience. But Friday, before the demolition team could do too much damage, a judge ordered an immediate and temporary cessation of work.The issue will be taken up again in court later this month.

There is certainly justice on both sides. The diocese should not be required to preserve a church that increasingly serves no purpose and then be forced to pay for structural repairs. On the other hand, St. Brigid’s, built by Irish immigrants in the 1850s, is one of the oldest remaining structures in Manhattan. In no sense is it a beautiful church, with its drab yellow façade and regimented rows of ogival windows. But it fits very nicely into the neighborhood and, even for those of us who have never entered the building, it would be a shame to see it disappear, notwithstanding the eminently sensible reasons for its demolition. A baseless and unsolicited prediction: Within the next month or so, some private philanthropy will come forward to purchase the space and convert into a community and performing arts center. This will be yet another step in that seemingly unstoppable process by which all of Manhattan is destined to become one consolidated culture zone.