30 N Ferry St Schenectady

 Saint George’s Episcopal Church

The first Anglican clergymen held services in Schenectady in c. 1710, but a congregation was not founded until 1735.  By the late 1750s, with the quartering of substantial numbers of British soldiers in Schenectady during the French and Indian War of 1755-1763, the need arose for a church building for the various English-speaking protestant inhabitants of Schenectady.  Ground was broken in 1759 for a structure that was to be shared by the Anglicans and Presbyterians.  Sir William Johnson was one of the subscribers for the construction of the new church.  Designed by Samuel Fuller, the “master builder” who had come to Schenectady from Needham, Massachusetts in the 1750s to build boats for the army, Fuller sent back to Needham for skilled masons and carpenters to undertake the construction, which continued from 1759 to 1769.  Services were being held in the uncompleted building by 1762 when two stoves were purchased.  An effort to have a charter issued by the Governor of New York to the Anglicans for the building led to the withdrawal of the Presbyterians, who ultimately acquired land on Union Street for their own church facility.  In 1766, the Ferry Street church was named in honor of St. George, the patron saint of England.
 
Originally, St. George’s had a rectangular plan without a tower oriented with the long axis running east-west toward Ferry St. and was 36 feet wide by 58 feet in length.  Walls were constructed of locally quarried stone laid in a random ashlar pattern, with walls up to 30-inches thick.  Window and door openings were headed by arched lintels of the same stone material.  A door and two windows were installed in the west facade end wall, a door and two windows in the south façade, and two windows in the north facade.  The roof structure was gambrel shaped, with principal rafters and horizontal purlins supporting sheathing boards that run from eave to the offset below the upper roof.  The original roofing was composed of wood shingles.  In appearance, it may have resembled the Palatine Church near Nelliston, Montgomery County, NY.  At the interior, two rows of columns supported a flat plaster ceiling between the columns and sidewalls, while the ceiling was vaulted between the columns.  A bell was hung within the church to call congregants to services.
 
During the American Revolution, as hostility toward the British rose, services were suspended and, for a time, the building was used as soldiers’ barracks.  Following the end of the war, services resumed in 1787 and a wooden tower was constructed in the mid-1790s at the west entrance.  During the 19th century, the building was enlarged several times.  In 1836-93, the east end of the church was enlarged with the addition of transepts and chancel.  By coincidence, the centrally located door opening in the south facade was bisected by the west wall of the south transept.  The new additions were constructed of the same stone as the original, but window openings were surmounted by arched brick lintels.  In 1859, the church was further enlarged toward the east as part of general renovations designed by architect Edward Tuckerman Potter.  In 1870, the wood tower was removed and replaced by a stone tower with a new wood steeple.
 
In 1906, the church underwent an extensive general renovation.  By the early 1950s, church facilities were in need of replacement.  Architect William C. Perry of Perry Rutledge and Bullfinch of Boston, the architectural firm retained by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to design the restoration of Williamsburg, VA, was hired to restore the church building to its “colonial” appearance and to remove the Victorian decoration and features of the 19th century.  With the exception of minor alterations and maintenance, St. George’s remains largely unchanged since then.

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