NORTH DUNEDIN PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

Otago Witness, Issue 2428, 26 September 1900, Page 44

NORTH DUNEDIN PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

The new Xoith Dunedin Presbyterian Church, which hag been in courde of erection for some time past on ihe site of the old wooden building at the corner of Howe and King streets, is now completed, and the dedication service took place on Friday night. The church is designed in the Gothic style of architecture. It is a neat, yet substantiallooking structure, built of brick, with cement finishings outside, all the buttresses, mouldings, and projections being coated with cement. The main entrance is from a corner tower fronting King street. This tower is 40ft high, and is finished at the corners with buttresses, terminating at the top in pinnacles. The church is entered by a porch and vestibule, there being Gothic fan-lighted glazed door between porch and vestibule, and folding baize doors leading from the vestibule into the nave of the church. The nave is 76ft in length, and the transept measures 54ft across, the walls being 22ft, and the ceiling 35ft high. In the gables at the ends of the transepts are Gothic tracery windows, worked in Oamaru stone, and measuring 25ft in height, and 10ft in width. At each side of these large windows are smaller windows, also with tracery. The walls of the church are lighted on eiiher side with four Gothic-headed windows, all of which have glazed quarry lead lights. The tracery round each of the windows is finished with coloured cathedral glass, worked in different patterns. The roof is a Gothic hammer-beam roof, showing all the timbers inside, and the ceiling, which, as has already been indicated, is 35ft from the floor, is finished with diagonal lining, having fret panels in the centre. The beams are a warm slate colour, the sarking is buff, the ceiling a light green, and the mouldings and principals are relieved with light blue. The roof has a very substantial and graceful appearance, its attractiveness being enhanced by the echeme of colour adopted in its decoration. The walls are plastered, finished in yellow, and lined out as Ashler's stone-work. The pulpit and communion rail are finished in polished figured red pine, with fret Gothic panels, filled in behind with red baize, and the columns at the back of the pulpit are surrounded with carved capitals, finished above with arched mouldings. There are two side doors in the church, leading out of the transepts, both being finished in red pine with moulded Gothic imnels. The church is

dadoed with 'boarding sft high, and painted in a rich dark colour. It is also ventilated with flues carried up inside the walls to such a height above the heads of the congregation that no draught will be felt, the flues being supplied with regulating ventilators. The church has seating accommodation for 650 people. The front of the pulpit is in circular forni^and the s§ats in thg tr^nsejpts are^laoejij^

in the same form. chairs being used in thf# part of the church instead of the ordinary pews. The nave of the church is seated in the ordinary way, and as there is a fall of 2ffc 6in in the floor from the back to the front, the whole of the congregation will have & good view- of -the- pulpit, which is supplied with a movable reading desk, which can ba regulated to any height required. The church will be illuminated by means of 1? brassfinished standards, surmounted by incandescent lights, as well as brackets round tha walls, and there are two gas stoves in tha transepts for the purpose of warming tha building when necessary. The building has a slate roof, and a large bell, having a wooden canopj', is to be hung on top of the tower at the corner of the building. Everything irt the interior of the building is very neat, and the large Gothic, well-proportioned windows, with their prettily designed patterns o£ variously-coloured glass, are a very pleasing; feature in ■ the structure, and are sure to attract the attention of most visitors' to th» church. Mr J. L. Salmond was the architect, and Mr George France the contractor, and the various subcontractors "have carried out their work faithfully and well." Mr Newman was responsible -for the plastering; Messrs Aburn Bros, for the painting ; Mr David Scott for the lead-light work ; M'Callum -and Co. and J. Murdoch and Co. for the joinery work ; Messrs Walker -Bros, for the plumbing ; and Mr Garside for the brass gas fittings.