THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Stamford, CT

Stamford is a city boasting eight Fortune 500 companies and is prosperous by any measure. But the town is void of significant architecture. My Google search for something special to sketch came up empty. The FPC looked a bit unusual, so I visited it on a clear but chilly March afternoon. The architect, Wallace Harrison, was obviously searching for something metaphorical, and unintentionally, ended up with the Fish, a symbol used in early Christianity. Of note, Harrison was also one of the architects of the United Nations building, the Rockerfeller Center and the Lincoln Center. The church is sometimes called the Fish Church, because of the building’s profile in elevation and shape in plan. The structure is 224 ft long and 60 ft tall and is made with 152 precast concrete panels embedded with 20,000 faceted colored glass jewels. The glass was fabricated in Chartres, France, and forms abstract representations of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, and bedazzles those inside the building. The Carillion Tower is 260 ft tall with 56 bells, taking 1,200 tons of concrete, half of which was in the foundation.

The occasion was the Tri-State Dance Competition, where I beat all of the guys, but lost to all of the girls.