North Presbyterian Church / Hellenic Orthodox Church of the Annunciation - Table of Contents

Interior - North Presbyterian Church / Hellenic Orthodox Church of the Annunciation
146 West Utica Street, Buffalo, NY 14222

On this page:

• Interior photos
• "Cleaning God's House" (2002-03 restoration)
• "Some Buffalo Churches" (1907 review)

Cleaning God's House by Dave Condren Excerpts from July 21, 2002 article in The Buffalo News Beth Campano and Tracy Dulniak are helping to restore the beauty of the Hellenic Orthodox Church of the Annunciation - one square inch at a time. Working with Q-tip-like cotton swabs, micro-spatulas and fine-bristle artist's brushes, the two art conservators have toiled for three months on the ceiling . . . They are undoing damage to canvas murals and plaster surfaces caused by last year's arson. "The work was painstaking," said Campano, who heads Great Lakes Art Conservation of Cleveland. Some of the ceiling areas were so caked with soot and grime that they could concentrate only on the tiny 1-to-4-inch squares they were cleaning, said Campano, who worked with a team in France that restored artifacts from the Titanic. The transept ceiling escaped serious soot damage b because it was coated with aged, dark, yellow varnish that protected it. The women removed the old varnish, repaired the paint and then applied a new coat of varnish. That project took more than three weeks. There also have been surprises For instance, parishioners thought the stars decorating the ceiling over the clerestory windows were gold because of decades of built-up grime. After cleaning they were found to be white. For most of the work, they used water-based cleaners and solvents mixed in "particular percentages and extremely diluted." Both Campano, who lives in Cleveland, and Dulniak, of Grand Island, have master's degrees in art conservation from Buffalo State College.

Some Buffalo Churches by Charles E. Illsley, Architect Reprinted from September 1907 The Inland Architect and News Record, p. 27 There is no more attractive object in a landscape, none on which the eye more loves to dwell and linger than a well-designed and appropriate church edifice, which seems to harmonize with and hallow its surroundings. Such is the new North Presbyterian church on Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, N. Y., George Newton, architect. The style is late Early English Gothic; the material quarry faced blue limestone ashlar with sawn white limestone quoins, coping, jambs and other trim. A view of this church is shown in the illustration pages of this number. The plan is simple -- a broad, low nave and transepts [photos above], a sturdy square tower in front, and, at the other end, a very shallow chancel facing an open court or quadrangle. This is bounded on two other sides by chapel, Sunday school, parlors, study, etc., and on the fourth, or street, side by an arcaded, covered passage from church to chapel. The grouping is picturesque and apparently convenient. The accessories in modern churches, all of which were unthought of two centuries ago, are now often, as here, fully equal in size to the church itself, sometimes even larger. The buttressed front tower with its tall, closed belfry and its flat roof, with paneled and crocketed pinnacles at the corners and delicate traceried stone parapet between, seems in perfect harmony with its surroundings and is attractive from every standpoint. There may be some question, however, as to the durability of the traceried stone parapet in a Buffalo climate and in so exposed a position. The side windows are low but are supplemented by large slated dormers trimmed with heavy, trefoiled bargeboards. These light the auditorium through deeply cut, rather narrow recesses in the slant ceiling. The general illumination may be ample per square foot, but the unavoidable contrast by day between the glare on the vertical walls of these dormer light-tunnels, so to speak, and the comparatively dull strips of unillumined main ceiling between is a drawback to this otherwise good mode of lighting. All windows on the street fronts are fitted with stone tracery, instead of the wood tracery so common in this country. This feature alone adds dignity and charm. All openings in stone walls have splayed, molded, sawn-stone jambs and labels. The. rich tracery in the tower window is a mixture of decorated and perpendicular styles -- a dubious innovation. Decorated tracery has its own peculiar grace and so has perpendicular tracery, but they do not harmonize well in the same opening. The cost of the church was $150,000. [The new English Lutheran church on North Main street....]

Sources:

• Program celebrating the public viewing of the restoration of the interior in December of 2002
• Nomination for city landmark status

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Special thanks for the Rev. Protopresbyter James A. Doukas for his cooperation.

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Photos and their arrangement © 2002 Chuck LaChiusa
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