First Unitarian Society Church Schenectady, New York

Text courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form PDF for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.

The First Unitarian Society Church is significant as an exceptional example of modem architecture in the city of Schenectady designed by nationally known architect Edward Durell Stone. The First Unitarian Society was established in 1901 by a group of General Electric (G.E.) workers from New England who had recently been transferred to the city . The small group met in various spaces before constructing its own church, a Tudor Revival building, between 1908 and 1919. The society grew substantially after World War II, and in 1956 the overcrowded congregation decided to build a new church, acquiring a parcel in the G.E. Reality Plot, a planned residential neighborhood created for G. E. employees in 1899. 1 Two architects who were members of the congregation along with the society's pastor, the Rev. William Gold, pushed the group to hire a nationally known architect to design a signature building for the congregation. The architects, Donald Mochon and Elwin Stevens, were instrumental in securing renowned architect Edward Durell Stone for the commission. Stevens was additionally significant in serving as the onsite consulting architect and construction manager and in designing several of the church's key interior features and furniture. The church was completed in 1961, the same year that construction began on Stone's design for the monumental new uptown campus for the State University ofNew York at Albany, a commission he learned about from Stevens, then director of planning and development for the State University of New York.