Reformed Church of Beacon

The church and cemetery are on a 2.2-acre (8,900 m²) lot between Ferry (Route 9D) and Beekman streets. It is level and clear on the east, where the church is, but then wooded and sloped to the west, where the cemetery is. There is a parking lot to the north, and the church's former parsonage.[1]

Two and a half stories in height and seven by four bays, the church is made from red brick laid in English bond. The main entrance, two large Gothic wooden paneled doors with a small Gothic window between them, is on the east. All but one of the side bays have a large Gothic window with a buttress between them. The west elevation is fully fenestrated, and a small wing projects to south. Near it, the church's spire, a later addition, rises.[1]

Inside, a red carpet covers the wooden floor under the sanctuary's 98 oak pews. The walls are plaster, covered to a certain level with narrow vertical wainscoting. They rise to a vaulted wooden ceiling with large trusses. In the rear, behind the altar, are the pipes of the church's manual-tracker pipe organ,[1] the only one in the Hudson Valley.[3] A small gallery, presently the choir room, is off the main entrance. On the west end is a larger room, used as a Sunday school and lecture hall. It is decorated with similar materials as the sanctuary except the wood is painted white and the plaster blue. From the south side, a small kitchen and hallway offer stairs to both the basement and bell tower.[1]

The cemetery is on the section of land from just west of the church wall to near Beekman Street, downhill. Its graves date from 1813 to the early 20th century, representing the range of funerary art common from those eras. It is overgrown and in some disrepair.[1] Notable burials include Abraham H. Schenck, James Mackin and William Few who has since been reinterred at Saint Paul's Church, Augusta, Georgia.

Cemetery, now overgown, in 2009

To the north of the church is the parsonage. It is a frame building two-story building with a large addition to its own north, probably built in the mid-19th century. Due to the extensive renovation and other work on it is, unlike the cemetery and church, not considered a contributing resource to the NRHP listing.[1]

A devout Episcopalian, Withers' churches for his own faith typically followed the conservative interpretation of the Gothic English rural parish church as advocated by the contemporary Ecclesiogical movement, a philosophy most visible in his nearby St. Luke's Episcopal Church, built ten years later. But when designing for other sects, he was willing to be more flexible. His design for the Reformed Church thus was his rare use for a church of the High Victorian Gothic style which characterized most of his secular buildings, such as Eustatia, a home for St. Luke's vestryman John Monell, also in Beacon. It features extensive use of polychromy on the courses of its outer walls and the slate tiling on its broad cross-gabled roof, all common features of the style.[1] Withers' request for black brick to balance the courses could not be achieved because none had yet been locally produced.[6]

The church is an early High Victorian Gothic work in America. It shows the influence of William Butterfield's contemporary All Saints Church in London's Fitzrovia neighborhood, and writings by John Ruskin such as The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice.[1] Influential textual sources also included G. E. Street's Brick and Marble (1855) and George Gilbert Scott's Remarks (1857), which defended the use of brick and Northern Italian Gothic features especially in church building. Since his arrival in New York, Withers had never faltered from his perusal of English periodicals and new architectural literature, some likely shared by his brother, Robert J. Withers.[7]