555-559 Bedford Rd., Pocantico Hills, New York. County/parish: Westchester.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places May 06, 2002. NRIS 02000447.
2 contributing buildings.
Union Church of Pocantico Hills is a historic, nondenominational church in Pocantico Hills, New York. It is a notable example of an NRHP-listed church building, whose modern artistic contributions are central to its historic status.
Construction of the church was funded primarily by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1921, as part of his plans to develop the community of Pocantico Hills, which was below the Rockefeller family estate, Kykuit. His father, John D. Rockefeller Sr., donated the land. Prominent advertising entrepreneur Barron Collier, owner of a neighboring estate, also contributed to the building of the church.
Upon the death of Rockefeller's wife Abby Aldrich Rockefeller in 1948, their son Nelson Rockefeller commissioned Henri Matisse to design the church's rose window in honor of her memory shortly before the artist's own death in 1954. When John D. Rockefeller Jr. died in 1960, his children commissioned artist Marc Chagall to design a Good Samaritan window in his honor. It is a one-story neo-Gothic style building with fieldstone foundation and walls and a slate covered, highly pitched gable roof. In 1930–1931, a parish hall was added to the east end of the church.
On May 6, 2006, the church was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
The church offers weekly, nondenominational Sunday services in the Christian tradition, open to the public, at 10:00 am ET. For more information about the services, choir, and Sunday school, see the official Website, Union Church of Pocantico Hills.
(read more...)National Park Service documentation: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75323271