Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 131, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1910 — Crucifixion Group Startles. [ARTICLE]

Crucifixion Group Startles.

In the shadow of the city’s great white way there has just been erected a Calvary and sculptured story of Bible history of such striking character as to arrest the attention of evdn the most thoughtless of those who travel the godless paths of the metropolis. These representations of the stories of holy writ, the New York Herald says, have just been erected on the facade of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, in West 46th street, between Broadway and 6th avenue. Since the erection on this episcopal edifice last week of the Calvary, having as a central figure the dying Christ stretched upon a cross, with Mary and John gazing appealingly Into his face, hundreds of passersby have halted before the daring work and bowed their heads mutely as they looked upon it. The treatment of the subject is regarded by sculptors as unique in church embellishment in t America. Certainly it is a very unusual decoration for the exterior of a protestant church. Both the representation of the cruCifixlep and the lunette over the main portal of the church, which ' depicts in twenty-nine figures the Virgin and the prophets, are the creation of Pierre T. Leßrun, who designed the church twenty years ago, and has now presented to It-the lunette as one of the final works of his career.