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

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

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. It was originally built as a

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an Architectural style, architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half ...

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 States ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

from locally mined

Rosendale cement Rosendale cement is a natural hydraulic cement that was produced in and around Rosendale, New York, beginning in 1825. From 1818 to 1970 natural cements were produced in over 70 locations in the United States and Canada. More than half of the 35 m ...

, a material which covers the

stonework Stonemasonry or stonecraft is the creation of buildings, structures, and sculpture using rock (geology), stone as the primary material. Stonemasonry is the craft of shaping and arranging stones, often together with Mortar (masonry), mortar ...

exterior walls. After

flood A flood is an overflow of water (list of non-water floods, 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 of significant con ...

s from nearby

Rondout Creek Rondout Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed October 3, 2011 tributary of the Hudson River in Ulster and Sullivan counties, New York, United States. It rises on Roc ...

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

fire Fire is the rapid oxidation of a fuel in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction Product (chemistry), products. Flames, the most visible portion of the fire, are produced in the combustion re ...

in the mid-1970s. A newly formed local

library A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

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 Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

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'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

building with a rectangular

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

. 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 refers to coloured glass as a material or art and architectural works created from it. Although it is traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also include three-dimensio ...

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

trefoil A trefoil () is a graphic form composed of the outline of three overlapping rings, used in architecture, Pagan and Christian symbolism, among other areas. The term is also applied to other symbols with a threefold shape. A similar shape with f ...

s. 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 ro ...

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

vestry A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government of a parish in England, Wales and some English colony, English colonies. At their height, the vestries were the only form of local government in many places and spen ...

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

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

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. Spire ...

paneled in a simple Gothic motif down at the base and

louver A louver (American English) or louvre (Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, see spelling differences) is a window blind or window shutter, shutter with horizontal wikt:slat, slats that are angle ...

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 northeast ...

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 (from , a diminutive of ''cappa'', meaning "little cape") is a Christianity, Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. First, smaller spaces inside a church that have their o ...

. 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 Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

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

New York State Legislature The New York State Legislature consists of the Bicameralism, two houses that act as the State legislature (United States), state legislature of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York: the New York State Senate and the New York State Assem ...

passed legislation, signed by then-governor

Mario Cuomo Mario Matthew Cuomo ( , ; June 15, 1932 – January 1, 2015) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 52nd governor of New York for three terms, from 1983 to 1994. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic ...

, 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 A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a sharp pointed arch at its top. This arch may or may not be a steep lancet arch (in which the compass centres for drawing the arch fall outside the opening). It acquired the "lancet" name from its rese ...

, 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 Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...

styles of churches built by congregants of English descent in the

Hudson Valley The Hudson Valley or Hudson River Valley comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. The region stretches from the Capital District (New York), Capital District includi ...

. 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 polymath a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, Critique of politic ...

. 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