Gothic Magnificence and Art Deco on Central Park

The Church of the Heavenly Rest (sometimes known among church musicians as the "Celestial Snooze") is located on Carnegie Hill, Fifth Avenue, two doors up from the Guggenheim Museum. Founded in 1865 by Civil War veterans hoping for a more restful life and a higher vision of how things might be after the unexpected and unprecedented savagery of that long and destructive war. The second building to serve this parish, on land purchased from Mrs. Andrew Carnegie (who lived across the street), was designed by Bertram Goodhue, one of the great American architects in the Gothic style. The building is grandly proportioned, but is characteristically American in its very wide nave and chancel, made possible by internal steel construction, so that the altar can be seen from any point in the building. Like all Gothic buildings it leads the gaze upward, but does so in an interesting way: large masses of sandstone blocks in the lower part of the walls, with all the color and decoration above. The windows are extraordinarily bright and glittering in their colors (mostly red and blue) and not necessarily futuristic, and the sculptured reredos begins high above the altar and the detail becomes sharper and more defined the higher up the eye travels (in part, of course, because the figures are larger). The sculpture--especially the angels in various places inside and outisde of the building--seems sort of Sumerian--and gives the building a kind of abstract and futuristic feel. The organ is an enormous five-manual Austin Organ (like most New York organs, with a long history of development and change) in a French style shaped by the church's former long-term organist who was a student and long-time friend of Jean Langlais. The church had a disastrous fire in the '90s which necessicated a new console which is now movable into the center of the chancel (this is not as simple a move as one might think), but for most of the time it rests in an alcove under the huge chamber that houses most of the organ. It's a lot of fun to play with all those French reeds and coloful mutation stops (mostly higher partial pitch stops - not sounding on the octave - ask me to explain later) which are requirements for 18th and 20th century French music. I'd love to hear this organ from the middle of the nave! This is a really good parish with a fantastic organist/choirmaster, Mollie Nichols, lots of families of all ages, enough children to have great programs for them, and a warm and friendly atmosphere for all the tourists who truly find it a restful and renewing place.