All Saints Episcopal Church
230 E 60th St
New York, NY 10022

It was built in 1894 at 230 East 60th Street as a mission chapel of St. Thomas Church at Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street, which was then, as it is now, a powerful Gothic sanctuary.

St. Thomas Chapel, on the other hand, was a modest melange by C. E. Miller; a pinch of Gothic, a bit of Romanesque. What charms it had were eradicated in a 1950’s renovation. Lancet windows were eliminated, the facade was smothered in stucco, a thin aluminum cross was attached and the rose window was replaced by an abstract composition.

”It became a truly forgettable presence,” said the Rev. Steven J. Yagerman, the rector of All Saints since 1993, whose 14-year-old daughter, Sarah, asks, ”Why can’t we have a pretty church?”

Father Yagerman said houses of worship must be attentive to the face they present to the public. ”If it looks like they haven’t done anything to keep themselves up in the last 10 years,” he said, ”you move on.”

Now, thanks to fund-raising within the parish and generous bequests from two parishioners, All Saints can undertake a $1.3 million renovation, to be finished next year, that will include air-conditioning the church, a specific request of one donor; making it accessible for the disabled; and, finally, replacing that facade. (The aluminum cross is already gone.)

Samuel G. White of Buttrick White & Burtis, who has been working for several years with All Saints to develop a master plan for its building, decided not to try replicating the original 1894 design.

”That was, at the time, referred to as Renaissance style, a name attached to any collage of classical elements,” Mr. White said. ”I didn’t feel as though the world would be a better place if I recreated it.” He also noted that the interior had been remodeled in the 1920’s, meaning the building had become a ”different church inside and outside.” It is different in another sense. St. Thomas Chapel took the name All Saints in 1963 and became an independent parish in 1965.

Mr. White turned for inspiration in part to the ”carpenter Gothic” of Alexander Jackson Davis, a leading 19th-century American architect, and in part to the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, which has a corduroylike facade of narrow strip pilasters.

It would not have been possible within the church’s budget to create such a facade in pure stonework. Instead, it will be made of a cementlike substance combining powdered stone and mica aggregate that can be tooled to resemble carved stone.

The abstract rose window will be replaced with a figurative window, 10 feet in diameter, depicting the resurrection of Jesus. It is by Sylvia Nicolas, an artist whose father, Joep Nicolas, was a renowned stained-glass designer in the Netherlands and New York.