Riverside Church

About

Riverside Church is an interdenominational church in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The church is associated with the American Baptist Churches USA, the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists and the United Church of Christ. The present church building was conceived by philanthropist businessman and Baptist John D. Rockefeller Jr. in conjunction with Baptist minister Harry Emerson Fosdick, designated to be a large, interdenominational church in Morningside Heights, which is surrounded by academic institutions.

The church occupies 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. 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 (119 m) tower above the nave; a narthex and chapel; and a cloistered passageway that connects to the eastern entrance on Claremont Avenue. Near the top of the tower is the church's main feature, a 74-bell carillon—the heaviest in the world—dedicated to Rockefeller Jr.'s mother Laura Spelman Rockefeller. A seven-story wing was built to the south of the original building in 1959 to a design by Collens, Willis & Beckonert, and was renamed for Martin Luther King Jr. in 1985. The Stone Gym to the southeast, built in 1915 as a dormitory, was designed by Louis E. Jallade and was converted to a gymnasium in 1962.