The Rosendale Library, formerly the All Saints' Chapel, is located on Main Street ( NY 213) in Rosendale,

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. It was originally built as a

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

Episcopal Episcopal may refer to: *Of or relating to a bishop, an overseer in the Christian church *Episcopate, the see of a bishop – a diocese *Episcopal Church (disambiguation), any church with "Episcopal" in its name ** Episcopal Church (United State ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

from locally mined Rosendale cement, a material which covers the stonework exterior walls. After

flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

s from nearby Rondout Creek damaged the building in the mid-1950s, the church abandoned it. It also survived a

fire Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction Product (chemistry), products. At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition ...

in the mid-1970s. A newly formed local

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

district was created to restore it for use as a library. In 1986 it was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

Building

The chapel is a one-story two-by-five-

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a Gulf (geography), gulf, sea, sound (geography), sound, or bight (geogra ...

building with a rectangular

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ove ...

. Its walls are uncoursed cement rock rubble laid in Rosendale cement, with some embellishments and flourishes at windows and doors. A

in the mid-1970s required the replacement of much of the original interior decoration, although the original wood ceiling is intact. All but two of the

stained-glass Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...

windows had to be replaced as well. The building was designed to hold 150 people. On the exterior, the most prominent feature is the steeply pitched

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

decorated with a scroll-sawn triangular insert with a central

quatrefoil A quatrefoil (anciently caterfoil) is a decorative element consisting of a symmetrical shape which forms the overall outline of four partially overlapping circles of the same diameter. It is found in art, architecture, heraldry and traditional ...

and three surrounding trefoils. The

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

roof tiled in a decorative pattern of scallops and flowers. A small entrance

vestibule Vestibule or Vestibulum can have the following meanings, each primarily based upon a common origin, from early 17th century French, derived from Latin ''vestibulum, -i n.'' "entrance court". Anatomy In general, vestibule is a small space or cavity ...

and

vestry A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government for a parish in England, Wales and some English colonies which originally met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquiall ...

are located on opposite ends of the east wall. On the west is a

hexagon In geometry, a hexagon (from Ancient Greek, Greek , , meaning "six", and , , meaning "corner, angle") is a six-sided polygon. The total of the internal angles of any simple polygon, simple (non-self-intersecting) hexagon is 720°. Regular hexa ...

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...

paneled in a simple Gothic motif down at the base and

louver A louver (American English) or louvre (British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". Mor ...

ed at the top, and a four-by-two-bay, architecturally sympathetic wing added in the 1970s, not considered contributing due to its lack of age.

History

The opening of the

Delaware and Hudson Canal The Delaware and Hudson Canal was the first venture of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, which would later build the Delaware and Hudson Railway. Between 1828 and 1899, the canal's barges carried anthracite coal from the mines of northeaster ...

in the late 1820s triggered rapid growth in Rosendale, as in other communities along its route. In 1874, St. Peter's Episcopal Church in nearby Stone Ridge established St. John's Mission to serve worshippers there, and within two years it had grown enough to warrant its own

chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common ty ...

. Two thousand dollars was raised, and the building was built in 1877. The name of the mission was changed to All Saints'. In 1893 the mission became a

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

in its own right, sponsoring missions of its own in the smaller nearby communities of Bloomingdale and Rifton for periods of the early 20th century. In 1956, flooding in the wake of

Hurricane Flossy Hurricane Flossy originated from a tropical disturbance in the eastern Pacific Ocean and moved across Central America into the Gulf of Mexico as a tropical depression on September 21, 1956, which became a tropical storm on September 22 and a hur ...

did enough damage to the church that it had to be abandoned, and the parish was dissolved. Andrew Snyder, a local descendant of the family that had first made a fortune from the cement, bought the building in 1957. He told the local women's club he would donate it for use as a library if they organized it. The club's members formed the Rosendale Library Association, and after restorations and improvements the chapel reopened as the library in 1959. A 1975

damaged the building somewhat, and the original interior finishings and all but two of the stained-glass windows had to be removed and replaced. As part of the repair work, a west wing that had been planned when the building was originally acquired was added. In the 1980s, after the property was listed on the Register, the

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passed legislation, signed by then-governor Mario Cuomo, permitting the creation of a special library district. Voters in Rosendale approved its creation in 1987 and it received its charter from the state Board of Regents two years later. Work continues on the library building itself. In the 2000s the district obtained a $75,000 state grant to repair the slate roof, and it is currently raising the money required to

match A match is a tool for starting a fire. Typically, matches are made of small wooden sticks or stiff paper. One end is coated with a material that can be ignited by friction generated by striking the match against a suitable surface. Wooden matc ...

it.

Aesthetics

The church's basic design, with its thick walls and lancet windows, is consistent with the English country churches that first used the Gothic Revival style. The arches and brick surrounds of the windows are also consistent with the

vernacular A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...

styles of churches built by congregants of English descent in the

Hudson Valley The Hudson Valley (also known as the Hudson River Valley) comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U.S. state of New York. The region stretches from the Capital District including Albany and Troy south to ...

. Embedded shells in the exterior, and other touches, suggest the Venetian Gothic stylings written about and championed by

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and politi ...

. The most unusual aspect of the building's architecture is the exterior finish. The rubblestone, normally left bare in such structures, was instead covered over with Rosendale cement, suggesting a desire to showcase a locally produced building material that had made many residents and congregants prosperous.

References

Bibliography

External links