Union Church of Pocantico Hills

Sleepy Hollow, NY

Hudson River Valley

I have always found churches fascinating. Partially for their architecture and partially for what they represent. When I was a child I loved going to church with my grandparents on Sundays. Because of this, even though I am not a religious person, I still associate churches, and all places of worship, with feelings of warmth. I take umbrage with most organized religion, but not their buildings. It doesn’t matter if it’s an intricate golden Byzantine mosaic cathedral or white Dutch colonial parish church with straight, clean lines; I still adore going to churches, albeit for different reasons now than then.

The Union Church of Pocantico Hills is an unassuming little gem a stone’s throw from Kykuit, the Rockefeller Estate, in Sleepy Hollow, and it makes sense to combine visiting the two sites on the same day. However, forget about trying to walk to it after visiting Kykuit, or walking to Kykuit after visiting the Church—the only way in and out of Kykuit is on a bus and they will not let visitors out anywhere than the parking lot. I used all my charm pleading to be dropped off on the road to no avail, and after three hours of walking around Kykuit, a three-mile uphill hike to the Union Church did not sound appetizing. Fortunately, Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow possess an unusually large number of taxi services for such small towns. And the drivers are the sort of people you thought existed only in movies and on television: salt-of-the-earth retired opticians who tell random stories about snapping girls’ bras in the fifth grade and say it’s a shame you didn’t get lunch at the Japanese restaurant because the food there is real good.

The Union Church was built in 1921 by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., as part of his plans to develop the town of Pocantico Hills near his family’s estate. Even though the Rockefellers were devout Baptists, the Union Church was designed to be non-denominational and open to Christians of all faiths. The Church itself is a simple, one-story, vaguely neo-Gothic structure with brown fieldstone walls and a steep gable. What makes the Union Church so special, however, is its stained-glass windows. 

When Rockefeller, Jr.’s wife, Abby, died in 1948, their son Nelson—who inherited his mother’s love of Modern art—commissioned Henri Matisse to redesign the Church’s rose window in her honor. Matisse initially refused the commission; he was eighty years old and wheelchair bound and felt he would not be able to do the window justice. Nelson Rockefeller persisted and eventually got his way (as the Rockefellers are wont to do). The Matisse rose window is a small circle with even, curving petal traceries. Surrounding the petals are organic leaf designs. The designs within each petal and leaf are unique with no shape being repeated within the original tracery. Matisse labored over the window for years and finally finished the piece in 1954. He died of a heart attack a few weeks later and because the maquette was on the wall of his bedroom where he died, it is believed that the Union Church rose window may have been his last work.

When John D. Rockefeller, Jr., died in 1960, his son David spearheaded a campaign to have Marc Chagall design a large stained-glass window in his honor. Abby Rockefeller had been a collector of Chagall’s work and had entertained him at Kykuit, but it wasn’t until the windows he designed for the synagogue of Hebrew University’s Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art that the rest of the Rockefeller children were convinced he was the right artist for the job. Chagall designed the large Good Samaritan window in 1963, and the commission expanded to include all eight of the nave windows. 

Things weren’t always easy-going, however. After designing the Good Samaritan window in honor of Rockefeller, Jr., Chagall was asked to create a window to memorialize Michael Rockefeller, Nelson’s youngest son who had disappeared during an ethnographic expedition to New Guinea when he was only twenty-two years old. The family didn’t think Chagall’s first design captured Michael’s spirit and had him redo it. The first window for Michael is the only nave window relegated to artificial lighting (it’s a faux window that was added to the nave in order to accommodate the glass), while the second design, which was well-received, has the place of honor next to the Good Samaritan window. Other windows commemorate various other Rockefellers. Chagall designed his stained-glass to incorporate the green and orange of the Matisse window. The nave windows closest to the rose window are filled with hints of Matisse’s palette; they take on more hues of blue as they progress down the line, eventually exploding into the resplendent azure Good Samaritan window at the back.

The Union Church of Pocantico Hills is such a small little spot that it’s worth taking the twenty-minute tour provided by one of the sweet women who work there. Indeed, the chapel is so small that if anyone else is on a tour, you can’t help but listen in even if you hadn’t intended on it. The guides are especially useful for visitors who didn’t go to Sunday school as a child; the Matisse rose window is readily accessible to all viewers, but the Chagall windows illustrate specific Old and New Testament stories.

Even the most ardent church or Matisse/Chagall connoisseur will be hard-pressed to spend more than an hour at the Union Church—most visitors are in and out in twenty minutes—so it’s not the sort of destination that warrants its very own outing. There are, however, plenty of other interesting historical sites in the area to combine into a day or even an entire weekend trip. If you don’t have a car, however, be sure to bring the numbers of a few local taxi services—there’s no hailing of these cabs. And all but the most ardent of cyclists beware: the Union Church is located near the very top of Pocantico Hills.

https://www.hudsonvalley.org/node/429