First Baptist Church of Ossining

First Baptist Church of Ossining
West and south elevation, 2009
Religion
Affiliation	Baptism
Leadership	Dr. G.S. Anderson
Location
Location	Ossining, NY, USA
Geographic coordinates	41°9′40″N 73°51′42″W
Architecture
Architect(s)	J. Walsh
Type	John Hoff
Style	Gothic Revival
Completed	1874
Construction cost	$75,000
Specifications
Direction of façade	South
Materials	Brick, wood and slate
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Added to NRHP	January 12, 1973
NRHP Reference no.	73001288
Website
Historic First Baptist Church of Ossining

The First Baptist Church of Ossining is located in the center of the village of Ossining, New York, United States. It is a brick building in the Gothic Revival architectural style with a tall wooden steeple built in the 1870s, one of Ossining's most prominent landmarks. In 1973 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Sixteen years later, in 1989, it was included as a contributing property to the Downtown Ossining Historic District when it was listed on the Register.

As a congregation, First Baptist long predates the church. Founder Elijah Hunter, who also established Ossining, began holding regular prayer meetings at his house in 1786. In the church's early years, masters and slaves held equal standing as congregants. The church was later instrumental in helping establish black churches in the area.

Building

The church lot takes up most of the triangular block at the crossroads where Ossining was first established, between Main Street on the northwest, Church Street on the southwest, and South Highland Avenue (U.S. Route 9) on the east. Ellis Place is directly opposite the church. The block is just south of the intersection with Croton Avenue (New York State Route 133).

On the northern tip of the triangle is a former bank building. The opposite side of Main Street is lined with a row of two-story 19th-century brick commercial buildings. Just west of the church, as the terrain slopes gently toward the Hudson River, the trail following the Old Croton Aqueduct, a National Historic Landmark, crosses Main. Across Church is a large parking lot between two larger commercial buildings. Ossining High School is a short distance to the southeast on the east side of South Highland. Immediately opposite the church are houses south of Ellis and another house of worship, Trinity Episcopal Church, on the north corner.

A low cast iron fence surrounds the lot, shaded on the east side by tall mature trees. The building itself is a one-and-a-half–story T-shaped brick structure on a stone foundation. Its steeply pitched gabled roofs are shingled in slate and pierced by four similarly gabled dormer windows on either side. On the east corner of the south (front) elevation is a tall steeple with the main entrance. The west elevation has a shed-roofed wing.

That facade has a large five-part lancet arched stained glass window springing from a stone belt course. In its upper woodwork are quatrefoils, the church exterior's prinicpal motif, surmounted by segmented limestone. Two smooth wooden colonettes on either side support an intricate vergeboard with more quatrefoils amid it. It hides the exposed hammerbeam trusses of the roof's structural system.

A smaller two-part window at the front of the west wing has a similar treatment to the main window, with a smaller quatrefoil. Just around the corner is a gabled side entrance with projecting roof supported by side brackets and a large quatrefoil in the transom. The four small tripartite arched stained glass windows along the facade to the north are separated by buttresses. At their north another steep gabled projection with quatrefoil and vergeboards shelters a taller, narrow tripartite arched window. At the very end is a smaller, narrower window with corresponding quatrefoil. On the east, a fifth window is located at the south end; otherwise, its fenestration is identical. The roof dormers, on both sides, have vergeboards that form quatrefoils.

Both ends of the rear section are centered around large blind lancet arches with crosses. Below the west window are three narrow windows set in the same wood as the arch; the east side has two arched double-hung windows beneath the blind arch with a third such window to the north and a single-paned diamond-glass window to the south. A vergeboard pattern echoes the arch on the west end; the east end has no vergeboards but a row of corbeled bricks paralleling the roofline.

On the north facade the central section projects slightly. It has a window similar to its counterpart upfront, without the flanking colonettes. Above it are the exposed trusses, without any vergeboards. The two sections on the rear of the cross-section have narrow windows in their exposed basement and a single tripartite lancet-arched stained-glass window in the second story.

See also

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Westchester County, New York

External links

• Historic First Baptist Church of Ossining website

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