THE NEW ENTRANCES OF 
ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S CHURCH 
MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY 
S ELDOM have the kindred arts of sculp¬ 
ture and architecture been more happily 
mated than in the recently completed portal 
of St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York. 
Though the general scheme of the entrances, 
as seen in the finished work, was in reality 
an afterthought, the whole harmonizes almost 
as though the plan had been conceived in its 
proper order, and the total effect is undeni¬ 
ably impressive. 
The starting point was the decision to 
honor the memory of the late Cornelius 
Vanderbilt by a gift from his widow and 
children of three pairs of bronze doors. 
Four sculptors were commissioned to do 
these, and soon afterward came the order for 
carved high reliefs in the tympanum above 
each doorway. As the doors progressed it 
was made clear that they would quite out¬ 
shine their portals, and, indeed, that the 
whole facade of the church, a Romanesque 
building in brown hewn stone, decorated 
with a course of alternating red and white 
blocks around the openings, would present 
an incongruous aspect when the sculptors’ 
work was applied to it. With these condi¬ 
tions facing them, Messrs. McKim, Mead & 
White, to whom the task was entrusted, de¬ 
vised the comprehensive and impressive en¬ 
semble shown in the illustration on the next 
page. A screen, or outer wall, 28 feet high 
and extending the whole width of the church 
on Madison Avenue (75 feet) was added; 
the three entrances were connected by a col¬ 
onnade, with recessed panels and twenty-four 
columns ; the arches were increased in depth 
and provided with ornamented archivolts ; a 
small frieze panel, carved in relief, was placed 
on the lintel, over each pair of doors ; and 
most important of all, perhaps, two large 
frieze panels, forming the entablatures of the 
columns, were provided, to connect the prin¬ 
cipal archivolt with its subordinates. 
I his necessitated slight modifications of 
the sculptors’ designs. For example, the 
lintels over the doors were all increased in 
height, especially those on the narrower doors, 
in order to get a better proportion between 
the doors and the tympanums, and also to 
strengthen the appearance of the lintel itself. 
The narrower doors are still taller than the 
central ones, though less than at first planned. 
Their dimensions are t i feet 3 inches high 
by 6 feet wide. The central pair of doors is 
11 feet high and 8 feet 4 inches wide. 
In carrying out this scheme, the French 
Romanesque style has been used, and the 
church porch of St.-Gilles, in Southern 
France, has been taken as a basis. The 
adaptation is richer, with an extra column in 
each main group, but the idea is essentially 
the same. A resemblance is also in evidence 
to St. Trophime, at Arles, but the other is 
more direct. 
The materials used are Cippolino marble 
(bluish white), for the columns; Numidian 
marble, stained a sort of mauve, for the wain¬ 
scoting of the recessed panels ; Alps green¬ 
stone for the panels themselves, and lime¬ 
stone for the archivolts. The frieze panels and 
the tympanums are in white marble. Nearly 
all of the stone has been stained in some de¬ 
gree, to bring the colors into closer relation¬ 
ship. The several sets of doors have resisted, 
thus far, the efforts of founders to make 
their color a uniform green. The natural 
tendency in New York is for bronze to go 
black, as the Trinity Church doors prove. 
In the effort to produce a patina of rich dull 
green, the bronze workers have made the 
middle doors too light, and all of them show 
traces of a residuum of greenish gray pow¬ 
der in the deep parts, which contrasts oddly 
with the dark surfaces, in high relief, of the 
recalcitrant metal—in effect, it “ turns the 
modeling inside out,” to use a sculptor’s 
term. But time will doubtless tone and 
mellow these panels. 
The next step toward embellishment will 
be large figures for four of the niches be- 
1 33 
