GRACE CHURCH, BUFFALO. THIS beautiful church edifice was dedicated on Sabbath morning, June 3, 1855, by BISHOP SIMPSON. It is one hundred feet long, including tower, by sixty-six feet eight inches wide, including buttresses. It stands upon a lot eighty-six and a half feet by one hundred, which cost $3,735. SELKIRK, Architect ; H. RUMRILL, Builder. It was commenced under the administration of Rev. A. D. WILBUR, and completed under that of his succes- H sor, Rev. PHILO E. BROWN. Rev. WM. H. DE PUY is its present pastor. BASEMENT. J. H. This plan secures a lecture-room and eight large class-rooms, with good light and ventilation. But the lecture-room looks rather small, and in time may be found too small even for the Sabbath school. And there seems to be no room especially provided and arranged for the infant class, nor yet for the Bible class. In most city churches, each of these requires a separate room larger than either of the class-rooms shown on the plan. This defect, if it be one, might be remedied by throwing three of the classrooms into two, one for a class and Bible class-room, and the other for the infant * class. There would then be five good class-rooms still left, and the Bible and infant classes provided for. Still, the present plan is not without its advantages, and knowing how difficult it is to provide for all our specialties in an area of sixty-five by one hundred feet, we are free to say that not one church basement in twenty has a better arrangement than this. The areas on the sides keep the walls dry, and allow space for light and air; and if ventilated and well drained under the lower floor, the rooms will never be damp or unhealthy. Every alternate seat in the basement has a revolv ing back, for Sabbath-school purposes. The wood-work is painted white, and the iron columns bronze-green. MAIN AUDIENCE-ROOM. THE walls of the building above the water tables are of red brick, faced with roll bricks, with cut stone offsets to buttresses. It has iron sills and string course, and corbel course around the tower, with iron hood-molds to front windows, resting upon iron corbels. PLAN OF THE MAIN AUDIENCE-ROOM. the church is entered by three doors and four aisles. The plan shows the side aisles as disproportionately wide, as but half as many persons use them as use the middle aisles. The stairs to the gallery and basement are well represented, as also the altar, pulpit, and pulpit stairs. The seats are circular, as shown in the cut, and are all cushioned with a drabcolored material. LIGHT. THE basement windows are of good sheet glass; and the hall between the classrooms is lighted by headlights over the class-room doors. The side windows of the main building are of buff-enameled glass, in lead sash, and those in front of a more expensive stained glass. НЕАТ. THIS church is warmed mainly by one of Culver's No. 4 furnaces, located The corbel-course under under the vestibule in the tower, (see Plan the main cornice, which shows so beauti- of Basement,) and by a portable furnace fully in the engraving, and gives the in the hall between the class-rooms. The building a neat and finished appearance, latter is used for warming the class-rooms. is formed altogether of bricks. It is The lecture-room is warmed by two uptherefore not very expensive, while at the right stoves, one on each side of the hall same time it is tasteful and ornamental. door leading to the class-rooms. The reThe interior of the building is all finish-hearsal-room, over the vestibule, is warmed ed with pine and grained light oak, except the altar-rail and baluster, which are cherry. The doors are all light oak. The gallery is supported by ten iron columns, with enriched composition capitals. The walls are plastered three coats, sand finish, and blocked off; and the ceiling three coats, plaster finish. The form of the ceiling is three sides of an octagon, with ribs resting on corbels on the wall, and pendants at the intersections. The room is admirably adapted to speaking, without ringing or echo. The accompanying plan of the audience-room sufficiently exhibits all the prominent features of its arrangement. The spacious vestibule is entered at the sides of the tower. From the vestibule by a small portable furnace under the vestibule, near the large furnace. Its location is shown on the right of the furnace D, in the plan of the basement. VENTILATION. THERE are six ventilating registers, each fourteen by twenty inches, in the main audience-room-three near the ceiling, and three near the floor. The lower ones are opened for the ingress of cold air when warming the room-and the upper ones for the egress of hot and vitiated air whenever necessary. A portion of each side-window is hung upon pivots, to admit of its being opened at discretion. Few churches have better provision for ventilation. The tower is of brick to the bell-section, which, together with the spire, is of wood. From the sidewalk to the finial of the spire is one hundred and thirty-five feet. The spire, which is in the form of an octagon, is covered with shingles with circle ends, and is finished with round ribs on the angles. These are scarcely visible in the engraving. The general external appearance of this church is exceedingly neat and tasteful. It is somewhat ornate, to be sure, but none too much so for such a city and such a congregation. Indeed it would do us no harm if Methodism had just such a church in every village of three thousand inhabitants in the United States. The gallery is furnished with an organ with twenty-two stops, and costing $1,500. The tower is to be furnished with a bell ORGAN GALLERY / PLAN hereafter. The pews are partly sold and | meeting. I give it full license to do all partly rented. The main audience-room, including gallery, will seat about twelve hundred per sons. By turning back to the cut again, the reader will notice a few other features worthy of note. The large window in the tower, in front, lighting the vestibule, is highly ornamental, and useful, and the next above it has a fine effect; and even the little rose window, still higher, is exactly in its place, and gives a finished appearance to the whole. Last of all, that prim little clock must not go unnoticed. "A quarter past eleven" -what can that mean? Does the morning service begin at eleven, and the clock show when the text is announced? or was the text announced at eleven, and is brother De Puy's subject just now beginning to open out finely before him, and he to warm up and become interesting? "A quarter past eleven!" What can it mean? But no matter. May the faithful clock keep good time, prevent all long sermons, (unless they are extra good ones,) and constantly admonish and finally reform all tardy slip-shod hearers who go late to this and now, clock, do your duty. There seems to be a slight defect in the perspective of the drawing. There is too great a difference in the apparent size of the buttresses on the right and left, ir front, for so slight a difference in their distances. Thirty or forty feet difference in their distances, with the beholder as far off as the drawing supposes, could not make one-half difference in the apparent size of the buttresses, as is shown in the cut. By turning over to the next cut, it will be seen that the difference is far less. The apparent height also is diminished too rapidly from the front to the rear, the roof dropping nearly twice as much as it should. This is not the fault of our artist, but of the lithograph from which he copies. The church on the next page is in better perspective. The entire cost of Grace Church and site (exclusive of the organ) was about twenty-eight thousand dollars. It is certainly a noble edifice-an honor to the people who reared it; and its erection will inaugurate a new era in the history of Methodism in Buffalo. Long may it stand and prosper in that stirring commercial city! is placed twenty-five feet within the line of Penn-street, leaving a clear space of fifteen feet on each side. The whole is inclosed with a neat wrought-iron railing, as shown in the cut, and the space within sodded, and ornamented with walks, shrubbery, &c. The site cost $15,000. DIMENSIONS. THE building is seventy-five feet wide by one hundred and fifteen in length, including the extreme points of the buttresses. The side walls are forty feet high from the water-table, and the end walls seventy feet to the comb of the roof, forming a basement and main story entirely above ground. The tower is one hundred and sixty-five feet in height-quite a moderate altitude for so large a buildingand yet the reader will bear witness that it sits very gracefully in its place, and seems to be all that is necessary. STYLE AND MATERIAL. THE style of the building throughout is the decorated Gothic of the fourteenth century. The cut is a very excellent representation of its exterior. The four octagonal corners, running up fifteen feet above the eaves, with a finished termination, are exceedingly beautiful. The front is of cut stone, and the sides and rear of brick, with stone trimmings to the windows and buttresses. The bricks are painted stone color, and the roof is of slate, laid diagonally. The edifice was built by Mr. GEORGE THOMPSON, after designs by Mr. J. W. KERR, architect. BASEMENT. THE basement is altogether above ground, and is light, dry, and airy. Its floor is two and a half feet above the surface, and there is a fine cellar under the entire building, which is used for the storage of coal, and as a location for the three furnaces by which the house is warmed. The basement is entered by the three Gothic door-ways in front, opening into a vestibule seventeen feet wide, from which two flights of stairs lead up to the main audience-room. Opposite the central door, a hall, twelve feet wide, with class-rooms on each side, leads to the lecture-room, This is forty-four by sixty-seven feet, and thirteen feet in the clear. There are four class-rooms, two on each side of the hall, in the front part of the basement story, each room being seventeen by twenty-six feet. This arrangement is easily understood without a diagram, and must strike every reader as very simple, and every way convenient. Each class-room has one window, the vestibule has two, and the lecture-room eight. Either of the classrooms is large enough for the Bible class; but we see no sufficient provision for the infant class separate from the rest of the Sabbath school. And if our Pittsburgh brethren are as noisy in class-meetings as some of us are, it might have been for the quiet of the neighborhood to have located the class-rooms in the rear of the church, or one story lower. "No danger," says an old-fashioned Methodist at my elbow; "no danger of much noise, or religion either, in such a church. Religion, and organs, and steeples never go together." We trust our Pittsburgh friends will profit by the hint, and maintain their former zeal and spirituality, even with their steeple and organ. We see no reason why either, or both combined, should prove fatal to their piety. MAIN AUDIENCE-ROOM. LEAVING the vestibule, we ascend to the main audience-room by two flights of stairs, with heavy oak rails and balusters, landing in a vestibule above. From this vestibule the main room is entered by two seven-feet arched door-ways leading into the tower, which here forms a part of the audience-room. This is a new and beautiful arrangement for entering a church, constructed with tower and basement above ground. It gives a fine entrance at once into the body of the house, while it adds much to the general appearance and beauty of the room. It leaves the large front windows full in view, and gives one common entrance to all the aisles. The organ, altar, platform and tower entrances, are marked in the cut. The main room is eighty-one by sixtyseven feet, with a groined arched ceiling thirty feet high at the sides and forty feet in the center. The ceiling is finished with molding ribs, springing from caps supported by vaulting shafts and corbels. The general effect of the ceiling is very fine, being that of a nave and aisle ceiling, with this difference: there are no columns dividing a nave from an aisle. The ceiling is a salmon color, and the walls, groins of |