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St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Surveyor's Name: Michele Boyd
Date of survey: July/August 2000
Building Address: 68 Grace Avenue
Block/Lot: 202/185-190
Building type: Ecclesiastical
Owner's name: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Building name: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Historical name: All Saints Chapel
Date of construction: c. 1924
Architect: Mann & MacNeille (Manhattan)
Building dimensions: Not available
No. of floors: One with basement
Decorative features: Copper steeple, fieldstone bell cote, fieldstone rubble wall insets, ashlar fieldstone stone trim, stone cross, multi-colored slate roof
Siding material(s): Stucco, fieldstone
Roof style: Cross-gabled and flared at the eaves
Roofing materials: Slate
No. of entrances & placement: Two front entrances on north elevation at Grace Avenue; side entrance at west elevation; two rear entrances at south elevation
Chimneys & placement: None
Architectural integrity: High
Architectural style: Tudor Revival
Description: Long, rectangular, horizontally oriented stucco church of eight bays with varied roofline. The roof is covered in multi-colored, rough-cut slate shingles of varying size and thickness. The roof’s picturesque irregularity makes it appear bowed and older than it is. A copper steeple is on the roof ridge at the east elevation. A bell cote and bell are mounted on the roof at the northern elevation adjacent to the front-facing gable. There are two entrances on the north elevation. The eastern entrance is through a steeply pitched, two-bay, front-facing gable (echoed in the façade of the Parish House). The entry is through a lancet arch. A tiny narrow window is at the top of the gable. This entrance leads directly to the sacristy, and is presumably reserved for the priests. The primary public entrance is at the western end of the north elevation through a rounded entry porch on a flagstone terrace. Slate steps and iron railings lead to the porch. The porch is covered with a hipped roof and supported by gracefully carved arcuated wooden supports. Under this porch is a wood and glass vestibule topped with crenellated molding. A heavy lancet-arch batten door with iron strapwork is accessed through the vestibule. The small lancet windows on this elevation are grouped in four pairs and have stone sills.
The dominant gable at the east elevation features one large tripartite round-arched window and two small lancet windows. The dominant gable wall at the west elevation (on Chapel Place) has a fieldstone rubble base topped by stucco with random fieldstone rubble insets. A stone cross is affixed at the peak of this gable and its principal feature is the configuration of tall narrow lancet windows of stained glass which give the appearance of one large window. A smaller gabled entrance is to the side of this elevation, through a lancet-arch batten door with iron strapwork. The south elevation is relatively plain in design, with three pairs of lancet windows, as well as two basement-level entrances (one through a glass-and-wood vestibule) and seven larger basement windows.
Interior: The interior of the church is quite simple and unadorned, save for the stained glass windows and a stone rood screen at the altar. There is a central aisle and one side aisle. A series of plaster arches supported by plain piers separates the side aisle from the nave. The chancel is delineated by a lancet arch trimmed in ashlar fieldstone. The peaked wooden roof is unadorned. Since there is documentation that many of the stained glass windows were added well after the church was completed, presumably the original windows were of plain glass.
Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 3. Side aisle of St. Paul's Church
.Historical information: According to a 1993 article in the Great Neck Record, this lot was the former site of a turntable for the railroad, which was operated manually to turn trains around.
St. Paul’s Church was formed in 1921, when the Rev. Kirkland Huske of All Saints Church at 855 Middle Neck Road (built 1886) started a fundraising effort among his wealthy parishioners to build a mission chapel. Huske wanted to serve the growing population in the vicinity of Great Neck station, which at the time was mostly made up of working-class people. Among the parishioners pledging money to the chapel fund were Henri Bendel and Walter P. Chrysler, as well as the Grace, Barstow, and Allen families. Another donor was Walter Wood Parsons, a prominent resident of Great Neck, Wall Street attorney, and All Saints’ vestryman who headed up the Chapel Building Committee. Parsons’ house in Great Neck had been designed by the architects Mann & MacNeille ca. 1910. Mann & MacNeille designed St. Paul’s Church, and presumably Parsons was the link. The design for St. Paul’s was based on a church in York, England, and a stone from that church was placed in the sanctuary at St. Paul’s. Bullen Brothers of Great Neck were the builders. St. Paul’s, then known as All Saints Chapel, was completed in March of 1924 and consecrated on May 20, 1927.
In 1956, the church ordered the three tall lancet windows in the west elevation from Whitefriars Stained Glass Studios in Middlesex, England. The windows were shipped to Great Neck on the Queen Mary in 1958. Whitefriars Studios also designed and created some of the smaller stained glass memorial windows in the church.
Reverend William Grime was installed as vicar at All Saints Chapel in 1924 and made rector in 1929 when All Saints Chapel was made an independent church and was renamed St. Paul’s. Rev. Grime served as the rector until he retired in 1958 (see survey form for St. Paul’s Rectory). Father John Mulryan is the current vicar. Presently the congregation numbers 125, down from a high of 500 in the mid-1930s. The church shares its worship space with a Syrian Orthodox congregation and rents out space in the Parish House to several community groups.
Sources:
Polly Whitehorn, “1893-1993: A Century of Living,” Great Neck Record, 5 August 1993, p. 20.
Devah Spear and Gill Spear, Book of Great Neck (Great Neck, New York: Devah and Gill Spear, 1936), 62.
“Easter Contributions and Pledges for Chapel 1925,” Historical file, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
“Statement of the Chapel Fund,” n.d., Historical file, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
Henry F. Clarke to Walter Wood Parsons, 28 May 1924, Historical file, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
Rev. Kirkland Huske to Walter Wood Parsons, 10 May 1927, Historical file, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
Horace B. Mann to Walter Wood Parsons, 13 May 1924, Historical file, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
“House of Walter Parsons, Esq., Great Neck, L.I., N.Y.,” American Architect and Building News 97 (1910): pt. 2, n. 1790.
George Bullen to Mann & MacNeille, 7 May 1924, Historical file, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
W.J. Harman to George Metz, 28 April 1958, Historical file, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
John Mulryan, vicar, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Interview with the author, Great Neck Plaza, New York, August 25, 2000.
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