No Bats in the Belfry.

After a thorough behind-the-scenes tour, I am happy to report that Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church does not have bats in the belfry. Of course, this is in large part because we have no belfry. We only have a clock tower. Apparently at the time of design/construction of the building in the 1870's, the church was asked not to install bells so as not to disturb the patients in St. Luke's Hospital across the street. The hospital is now the Peninsula Hotel.

Accessing the attic: To get up above the sanctuary, you have to be reasonably spry and healthy, be plugged into certain church programs, stay on the administration's "good side", and promise not to sue the church. We were asked to carry our signed releases on us as we climbed up a small staircase amid a maze of catwalks and support structures.

The church's web site provides a virtual tour of the publicly accessible areas of the building, but also provides these comments on the attic:

The original lighting was large gaslights, some of which still reside in the attic above the ceiling.

Also in the attic are four huge trusses, most likely from Scandinavia, which are the main support for the roof and the ceiling of the church. These trusses are wood timbers with steel pipe bracing; they are about 120 feet in length and run east to west, an unusual architectural layout.

The abandoned gaslight fixtures were prety cool. However, the attic space above the sanctuary is not lit by gas, but instead by modern high-energy-efficiency light bulbs ... plus (on the Fifth Avenue side) its own stained glass window, which is not visible from the sanctuary:


The indoor roof of the sanctuary looks like the upturned hull of a ship. This picture shows a bit of the curvature (I couldn't capture the whole thing with my camera):

Around the edges, you can glimpse the outer layer of the stained glass windows that illuminate the sanctuary below (there are two layers of glass which presumably help with energy conservation):


Stage 1: We walked over the sanctuary roof to the clock tower, although we stayed on the catwalks rather than scrambing across the actual roof (which would have been fun). At our first stop, Rev. Rock showed us the magic incantation that makes the clock run:


Just kidding about the incantation. It turns out that our clock runs on rocks. Specifically, a big box of rocks. Some lucky person comes up here once a week and winds a winch to bring the box of rocks up to the top of a pulley system; over the course of the week, the box falls, powering the clock.

The room also featured (seemingly) a ladder to nowhere, or else a fire exit. Our intrepid comrade Denis reported, however, that it provides access to the roof. The rest of us took his word for it.

Stage 2: We climbed up the stairs to the right of the ladder, and reached the guts of the clock mechanism (you can see Keith and Patrick on the other side of the machine):

The mechanism turns the hands on all 3 clock faces. Based on the structure of the arms and gears, it looks like the mechanism is designed to be able to deal with a fourth clock face, which would logically be placed on the fourth wall of the tower. But the fourth wall is blank. Our pastor - who was not present at the time - reports that the church was specifically asked not to put a clock face on the side of the tower visible to the hospital. Apparently it would have been disturbing or confusing to the patients to see the passage of time. Perhaps the hospital administrators didn't want patients to know when the doctors were late for their rounds.... Or how long it was between relatives' visits....

The mechanism also runs a smaller inside clock, presumably so the clockmaster can adjust for daylight savings time or at least check whether everything is working OK.


Stage 3: The level above this clockwork has a bunch of louvers, which are covered with screens to keep out the pigeons. And perhaps bats as well. The screens are not a very fine mesh - they were maybe 1 cm openings - so they would let in most insects as well as dust. Surprisingly, the louver/screen combo was not entirely effective against the snow; there were a few small drifts inside.


Stage 4: As you can see, there are still more stairs leading upward -- apparently it gets darker, narrower, and more claustrophobic. And apparently there is a place where you find yourself surrounded by 4 locked doors. Potentially the stuff of nightmares. This was the end of our journey, however, and well worth it. No signs of bats anywhere.

The church now known as the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church started way downtown (a few miles south of where it is now) in 1808. The church's web site (at the virtual tour, history and architecture pages) provides some intriguing details about the migration to our current location (the fourth so far):

• "The land [at 55^th Street and Fifth Avenue] was purchased at the intersection of what were still two dirt roads amidst mansions like those that still stand along the east side of Central Park. The cost of the land was $350,000." (I have a feeling that was pretty expensive at the time, for land on the outskirts of NYC civilization. But the land would probably be worth 100 times that now. Air rights above the sanctuary were sold 15 years ago for $15 million.)
  
• The current edifice was "[d]esigned ... in 1873" by the New York architect Carl Pfeiffer (a 37-year-old German immigrant), and they didn't waste a lot of time getting building permits because "[t]he church cornerstone was laid on June 9, 1873."
• "The new church was dedicated May 9, 1875," although the steeple was not completed until 1876.
• In 1875, "Ulysses S. Grant was President of the U.S.[,] Alexander Graham Bell pioneered the telephone; [t]he Kentucky Derby had its first running; the first roller skating rink opened; the first ice cream soda was invented."

Later that evening, I caught the movie "The Host" - one of the best movies I've seen in a while. Funny, suspenseful, and action-packed.