St. Vincent Ferrer, Survey & Cleaning Tests—Private
The Church of St. Vincent Ferrer is a Catholic parish located at 869 Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, NY. The present building is the third built by the Dominican Fathers on or near the current site. It was completed in 1918 by architect Bertram G. Goodhue, who was also responsible for the design of design of St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue just a few years earlier. Goodhue designed St. Vincent Ferrer in the Gothic Revival style using a Latin Cross plan. It was designated a New York City Landmark in 1967 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 as a stunning example of Gothic Revival architecture.
The EverGreene conservation team was contracted by the Parish of St. Vincent Ferrer and St. Catherine of Siena to conduct an inventory, complete a cursory assessment of conditions, and conduct conservation cleaning tests on the paintings, stone, metals, and wood. The purpose was to summarize the conditions of the overall interior envelope, paintings, masonry and metal base building elements, objects in wood, stone, and metal, and to provide an inventory of the items reviewed. Also, to outline the results of the cleaning tests that were conducted on the Stations of the Cross, masonry, stone sculpture, metal, and wood. EverGreene conservators carried out onsite investigations on January 23 and June 10 – 12, 2019. The treatment recommendations were provided to assist the client in developing a full-scale treatment plan for restoring the St. Vincent’s interior architectural arts and artworks in phases.
A small pilot cleaning program to test widescale methodologies for interior finishes was implemented in the St. Joseph Chapel, also known as the Holy Family Chapel, in October of the same year. The space was selected as it was representative of conditions seen throughout the church, including soiling, efflorescence, cracking, and post historic perforations. Cleaning and patching treatments were implemented for both the sandstone and Guastavino Rumford acoustic tile walls and ceiling based upon the testing which occurred earlier in the year.
