Midterm- Albany Churches Proposals

A)

Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception– The walking tour starts with the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Eagle Street. It is a Roman Catholic Church that opened its door in 1852. It is in the architectural style of Gothic Revival. Bishop Mccluskey established the Cathedral. The Cathedral was built for 250,000 (today it would be equivalent to about $6.5 million).

St. Peter’s Episcopal- Next the walking tour will lead you to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on State Street. The church’s first established in 1715, it was the first Anglican congregation to come this part of the Hudson River. In 1803 the original building was destroyed and by 1878 was completed. The design takes on a French Gothic Revival Architectural style that was created by Richard UpJon and his son Richard M. UpJohn.  The church was deemed as a National Register of Historic Place in 1972. Five years later is became a National Historic Landmark.

Historic St. Mary Church- The tour makes it way to the Historic St. Mary Church on Lodge Street. This church is a Roman Catholic church that was built in 1870 with a Italian Romanesque Revival architectural. Created by Charles C. Nichols and Fredrick Brown. St. Mary’s was part of the earliest Catholic missionary world that was established in the New World. After becoming a church in the 19th century it has gone through two different reconstruction, caused by the increase of the immigration population.

First Church in Albany- Next stop will be the First Reformed church or it also was called the North Dutch Church located on North Pearl Street. In 1656 it was a dedicated church, build with huge stone. It was called the “Blockhouse” because it was also used for a defense structure in case of an attack. Phillip Hooker was the architect. In addition to the church Hooker also was the architect for Albany Academy, City Hall and for the original State Capitol building.

The Cathedral of All Saints-  Next up is the Cathedral of All Saints, located on South Swan Street. William Croswell Doane was the first Bishop of the Cathedral. The Cathedral was also called the Pioneer Cathedral. It was built of Gothic Revival Architectural style by Robert W. Gibson who designed many churches in and around NYC.

 

“First Church in Albany.”(2016) First Church in Albany. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.

“History.” (2016) Historic St. Mary’s Churchon Capitol Hill. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.

Pape, William H, Reverend. “Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Albany New York.” Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Albany New York. N.p., 2012. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.

Robert, Anne, and Marcia Cockwell. “St. Peter’s Episcopal Church Albany.” – Albany New York. University at Albany’s University Art Museum., 2016. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.

“Robert W. Gibson.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Nov. 2015. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.

“The Cathedral of All Saints In The City of Diocese of Albany .” (2016) The Cathedral of All Saints. N.p., 2016.Web.29 Feb. 2016.

B) 

Google map estimates that the tour of the churches of Albany will take 29 minutes to complete.

C)

The themes of my walking tour is the churches of Albany. Other themes that I will be showing the architecture of the church and the influence of the European culture that was brought over when the New World was being settled. The potential audience for this walking could be everyone, but more specifically the religion community of the capital district. Sunday School teachers could take there students to these churches to show how the different religion there in within Albany. This tour could be have the potential of an easier field trip for elementary teachers in the Albany School District. The First Church of Albany was created while Henry Hudson was first establishing Albany. I took also think that this tour will attract people who are interest in the architecture of Albany, the impact the Europe had on these churches. One of the big take away of this walking tour will be the diversity of religions that were established here in Albany.

D)

Cathedral of Immaculate Conception

St. Peter Episcopal

E)

What religion denomination had influencing power within Albany during the 19th century?

What there other architectural style architects were influences by?

Are there other churches that were popular during this time but are no lower around?

 

3 thoughts on “Midterm- Albany Churches Proposals

  • February 29, 2016 at 11:53 PM
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    Your tour made me consider just how important religion was centuries ago. These were times when families would go together to Church, work being halted on a Sunday and stores closing for the day. Women (which is apart of my own tour proposal) must have played a key role in organizing church events as well as their families, a community would flourish from one’s religious unity. I didn’t focus too much on churches in my own tour but I’d love to see if in some way areas close by were influenced to a women’s liking such as a bakery, seamstress or market place opening close by. If there was then there could be a link between certain establishments being created to create an area where everything a women needed would be close by to her and her family for convenience.

  • March 3, 2016 at 12:16 AM
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    I noticed how both of our tours center around religion and stop at churches because of the history found behind church and synagogue walls. I feel people don’t know enough about a history of churches that is presented in front of them everyday in society; a tour is a great way to inform someone.

    The one question I wanted to ask is:

    Are you going to focus on different Architects or specific church design when researching?

  • March 9, 2016 at 10:08 PM
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    Be careful to not be too trusting of your sources–that thing about the church being established by Henry Hudson isn’t true! Hudson basically sailed up the river, got cold and went home, and there wasn’t European settlement at Albany for another 20 years after, and Hudson had basically nothing to do with the founding of the city. So if you saw that somewhere, be sure to double check your general timeline.

    You’ve got a couple different directions you’re going in, which can seem like a good idea when it feels like you need more material to talk about, but it’s just going to result in a scattered project pulled between architecture, immigration, and denominational diversity. If you want to go with denominational diversity, right now you’ve got three Catholic churches, an Episcopal and a Dutch Reformed–you should really consider adding a synagogue and/or the Israel African Methodist Episcopal church from Chris and Dezire’s tours to accentuate your diversity theme. If you want to go with immigration, you should focus your location stories on that rather than the architecture, since 300-5oo words isn’t actually that long, and giving someone with little background in a particular immigrant group’s history and how it relates to the church is going to take up more space than you think at first. If you want to focus on the architecture, it might make sense to select churches that either have something in common, like denomination or time period, or pick as wide a range of churches as possible so you have a big variety of architecture to talk about. Close up photos, if you can find them, might be helpful for helping your visitor find architectural features (kind of like a picture find game).

    Your other challenge is that you have to find something to say about these places that their own websites don’t already say. (And for citations to websites, you should include the link–a citation to a website doesn’t do much good if the reader can’t click it). Right now almost all of your sources are the churchs’ own websites, so you can’t just repackage someone else’s work–that’s just a starting point. If you want to focus on the architecture, do some digging on the particular architectural styles, or on the immigrant group, or on the architect, or on the background of the bishop, etc, etc.

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