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Behind The Story

Type: News

News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.

Articles attributed to "staff" are written by the editor or a senior editor. This is typically because they are brief items based on a single source, such as a press release, or there are multiple contributors, such as a collection of photos.

3 replies on “Then & Now: St. Mary’s Episcopal Church”

  1. The architect was George Edward Harney (1839-1924)

    The builder was Sylvanus Ferris, who was apparently quite young at the time.

    They were assisted by Robert Barclay Hitchcock who was sort of a naval architect.

    They are all buried in Cold Spring Cemetery.

  2. As I understand it, George Harney had an office above George Washington Purdy’s dry goods store at the corner of Morris and Main, where the Sunoco station now stands (you can see the deep foundation wall of the original Purdy store in back of the Sunoco). This would have been very convenient for overseeing the construction of the church. About 1865, Purdy built the Second Empire house immediately to the north on Morris Avenue, where he lived with his wife, who had been a widow named Monks. She had a teenage son about the time of the construction of the house, store and St. Mary’s, named John Austin Sands Monks (or J.A.S. Monks), who became a well-known painter and engraver, specializing in portraying sheep. My wife and I are restoring the Second Empire, which saw service as a boarding house, nursing home, and B & B.

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