St. John's Chapel, Varick Street, New York
Rudolph Ruzicka American, born Czechoslovakia
Related architect John McCombe Jr. American
Not on view
Opened in 1803 as an outpost of Trinity Church, St. John's Chapel faced a park that the church developed on land bounded by Hudson, Varick, Beach and Laight Streets (now part of Tribeca). The architect John McComb Jr., then at work on New York's City Hall, created a Georgian design that included four Corinthian columns supporting a pediment below a 214 foot tower. The portico and columns were of reddish sandstone and the Corinthian capitals were said to be the first in New York carved out of stone. The building stood until 1918.
Daniel Berkeley Updike, who founded Boston's Merrymount Press, described Ruzicka's print as "the largest of his black and white blocks...an unsurpassed rendering of a formal architectural subject."
