page_title: Riverside Church
section_title: Narthex
hierarchical_section_title: Riverside Church / Architectural features / Main building / Narthex
caption_attribution_description: English: Riverside Church, New York City (June 2014)
context_page_description: Riverside Church is a Baptist and Congregationalist church in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on the block bounded by Riverside Drive, Claremont Avenue, 120th Street and 122nd Street near Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus and across from Grant's Tomb. It is an interdenominational church that is associated with the American Baptist Churches USA and the United Church of Christ. The church was conceived by philanthropist businessman and Baptist John D. Rockefeller Jr. in conjunction with Presbyterian minister Harry Emerson Fosdick as a large, interdenominational church in Morningside Heights, which is surrounded by academic institutions.
  The original building opened in 1930; it was designed by Henry C. Pelton and Allen & Collens in the Neo-Gothic style. It contains a nave consisting of five architectural bays; a chancel at the front of the nave; a 22-story, 392-foot tower above the nave; a narthex and chapel; and a cloistered passageway that connects to the eastern entrance on Claremont Avenue.
context_section_description: The narthex, which was designed in the late Gothic style with a Romanesque layout, is directly south of the nave and can be accessed from the church's West Portal. The narthex is split into four vaults that have Guastavino tiled ceilings that are supported by simple limestone columns. A stone spiral staircase on the west side of the narthex, directly south of the West Portal, leads to the basement. There are two grisaille windows and one rose window on each of the western and eastern sides of the narthex. The eastern wall has four 16th-century lancet windows that were previously in the Park Avenue Baptist Church; they are the only windows in Riverside Church that were not built specifically for the church. Stairs leading both upward and downward are on the eastern side of the narthex, and a mortuary chapel is on the northeastern corner. The mortuary chapel is known as the Gethsemane Chapel but prior to 1959, it was called the Christ Chapel.
caption: The chapel
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