The portal of Saint Bartholomew's Church in New York City

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 2001 by Percy Jr. Preston

I understand the difficulty you mention of getting just the right tone of bronze not to look too artificially aged--yet preserve the metal truth, but I feel sure that you will conquer that as you have so successfully done the other embarrassments all the way through, and I must express to you as well as to Messrs. French, Adams, O'Connor and Martiny our appreciative thanks for your considerate care and collaboration with our desires. (24)

The architect also beard from his old friend Augustus Saint-Gaudens: "I am very sorry that I did not find you in when I was in New York I have seen Saint Bartholomew's and want to congratulate you. O'Connor's work is a revelation to me, it is very fine and he at last is a fellow who must be counted with." (25)

In a lengthy critique in the April 1904 issue of the Architectural Record, Russell Sturgis (1836-1909), an architect and critic, praised Stanford White as "one of the ablest of modem designers....He can turn out more fine and elaborate work in a given time...than his neighbors." Sturgis praised Herbert Adams's tympanum as reminding him of the Italian Renaissance master Luca della Robbia. He also gave high marks to

Martiny's lintel and the two small plaques on either side of the center door. He called O'Connor's large frieze "the most striking and brilliant part of the whole composition when the sculpture was considered."(26)

The last component of the portal was the four limestone statues of Old Testament prophets in the niches between the columns. Originally Martiny was given the commission for the statues, each five feet, eight inches high and in three-quarter relief, which were put in place in 1902. However, neither Mrs. Vanderbilt nor White liked them, and they were removed.(27) Some years passed as White tried to persuade her to allow O'Connor to make the statues. After White's death in 1906, Mrs. Vanderbilt indicated that Martiny should model new statues.(28) He did, they were accepted, and the statues of Isaiah, Elijah, Jeremiah, and Moses completed the portal in 1908.

PERCY PRESTON JR. is an honorary warden of Saint Bartholomew's Church and the author of Saint Bartholomew's Church: An Architectural Guide.

(1.) The scale of this house may be appreciated from the chimneypiece, designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, which is now in the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and from the iron entrance gates, now mounted at Fifth Avenue between 104th and 105th Streets.

(2.) Arthur T. Vanderbilt, Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt (William Morrow and Company, New York, 1989), p. 180.

(3.) Edward Clowes Chorley, The Centennial History of Saint Bartholomew's Church in the City of New York, 1835-1935 (privately printed, 1935), p. 196.

(4.) Report of the Building Committee, March 14, 1894, and an undated list of donations received (parish archives, Saint Bartholomew's Church, New York City).

(5.) Alice G. Vanderbilt, New York City, to the Reverend David H. Greer, June 8, 1900 (Saint Bartholomew's archives).