1704, by the Protestant Huguenots escaped from France, and settled at Brooklyn, New Rochelle, &c. Both these churches are now destroyed to make room for other buildings. We regret their loss, because though they were informed by no spirit of beauty, they were built in a sincere desire to do the best that lay in the builders' power, and, at all events, were marred by no pretence, and told no falsehoods. The visiter to our city, who comes from over the water, sees the spire of Trinity Church rising far above the mass of houses and the clustered masts. It is a graceful and beautiful spire-the crotchets, perhaps, are a little too thickly placed, and not of sufficiently marked character; and we I could have wished that the windows had been omitted from it, since, unless these features are kept very smalltoo small in such a spire to be of any use-they invariably interfere with the upward tendency of the lines. To have omitted the windows, however, would have been to have lost a good opportunity for making money, an opportunity which American and English committees, whe Church of the Divine Unity, Broadway. ther ecclesiastical or viaductile, never lose sight of. Accordingly, we find that 66 a fee is expected" by the Sacristan for allowing the little towerstaircase door to remain open from sunset to sunrise, and we may add, that the expectations of this enterprising gentleman are very seldom disappointed. We are sorry for him, but truth demands of us to state that the Latting Observatory offers much better accommodation to visitors, and a more extensive view, at no advance in price. The present "Trinity Church" is every way a more beautiful building than the dingy old stone RICHARDSON COA.SC First Baptist Church, Broome-street. Church of the Holy Redeemer, (Catholic) Third-street. edifice, with a wooden spire, which it has displaced. That was a very plain, matter of fact structure, with an incongruous semi-circular porch jutting out in front/ A model of the old church was preserved till lately in the vestry room of the modern building, and afforded a very edifying contrast. The new church belongs to the Perpendicular Period of Pointed Architecture, and was erected between the years 1838 and 1845, after the design of Richard Upjohn, an English architect, if we mistake not, settled in New-York. The material is the light brown freestone, from the Little Falls quarries, in New Jersey, and is, throughout, finely cut. The church, which, unlike all the other Protestant churches in the city, is open every day in the year, from sunrise to sunset, is entered by two side porches, and on Sundays by the large door in the Tower. The tower is, with the spire, 280 feet high and is provided with a clock, which strikes the hours, and chimes the halves and quarters, and a full chime of bells-the only one in the city, and a gift, for which the writer of this article desires to make his best bow to the Corporation for all the pleasure it has given him to hear. Over the principle door there is a large window filled with elaborate tracery, which lights nothing and is of no use. It is put there. like the niches in the tower sides, for show, and we wish that the architect had been willing to leave those spaces bare, and put the mo ney and labor which they represent into real stone groining for the three porches, which, as we have said before, yawns, at present, disgracefully in wood. It has been the fashion for some time past to say patronizingly that (6 Trinity is a fine building"yes, very finebut it's all spire. Now all that we imagine the architect of the church attempted to do when he designed it was, to imitate, good existing examples. We take it for granted he did not design executing an original work/If he did, he does not know what original means-because every thing in Trinity is copied from old examples from first to last, and the only question for the critic in testing its merits is, whether it be a correct copy or not. Now, working on this principle, Mr. Upjohn is quite right in making his tower and spire the dominant feature in the church, because it was the great principle on which the old churches, or the best of them, were designed.The tower and spire, or the tower when there was no spire, was the great exterior feature of the building. It was the life and soul of the structure. It represented the character of the buildingit strove to embody its spirit-it was the portion which first caught the eye-to him who came over the sea or over the hill, that beckoning finger first gave wel come sign of homethe cheering voice, hid within, first gladdened Grace Church. of the imposing spire of Trinity. We think it clumsy, and wanting in lightness of line, and in the whole quality of aspiration which is the first element demanded in a spire. But we insist that its size shall not be brought up against it, because it is undoubtedly according to law that it should be larger than the body of the church would seem to demand. Beside, when we remember that the tower is the best part of the church, we shall find it unreasonable to complain that this is the very part of which they have given us the most. The body of the church is poor, and decidedly wanting in character-a crowd of buttresses which support nothing, a foolish battlemented sky line, a double range of very ordinary windows, one serving as a copy for all the rest-this is all that the body of the church has to offer us. The interior of the church is, at first glance, very fine. It would continue to be considered fine by any criticism which chose to overlook the evident insincerity of the whole affair. The side-walls, the whole roof, and the chancel are of plaster, colored to imitate stone. The columns of the interior are stone as far up as we can see we are unable to vouch for more. As we have already said, Nature is asserting herself nobly in damp and mould, and making all the architect's deceptions plain in the light of truth. The woodwork throughout the church is of oak; the screen in the chancel, the reading desks and chairs, the pulpit, the organ and organ gallery, are all elaborately carved. The church would be an object of which our city might well be proud, if it were not for the deceptions which stare us in the face; and, after they are once found out, destroy much of our pleasure in visiting it. Higher up Broadway we have St. Paul's -respectable, old-fashioned St. Paul's, of which Willis sang in his flippant way: "On, or by St. Paul's and the Astor, That band of Barnum's whose bray wakes the discordant echoes all about, is the one he alludes to playing its two-and-sixpenny discords, to the unspeakable de light of all the pie-women in the neigh |