File:Christ Church, Riverdale, Bronx - 20220616.jpg

English: Christ Episcopal Church, 5040 Henry Hudson Parkway East, Bronx, New York, June 2022. Built in 1866, this historic church was designed by noted architect Richard Upjohn, an early adopter and popularizer of the Gothic Revival style in the United States, hence it's no wonder that, according to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, "this church has been the prototype for many Episcopal churches across the country". More specifically, the polychromatic exterior (witness the contrast between the rough, randomly coursed blocks of locally-quarried dark gray granite, the smooth-textured sandstone and terra cotta trim, and the multicolored slate shingles on the roof) and florid ornamentation (check out the trefoil tracery at the top of the main stained glass window, the carved corbels at the base of the window hood, and the terra cotta mandorla with cross-and-miter escutcheon at the peak of the gable) signify the freewheeling Victorian Gothic substyle that was just coming to prominence at the time. Christ Church traces its history back to 1864, when Riverdale still belonged to Yonkers and was in the full throes of a transition from rural farmland to a sort of 19th-century exurb populated by the country manors of wealthy Manhattanites. That year, local residents, describing themselves as "landed gentry of wealth and position" who could thus afford to finance construction themselves, resolved "to build a fit and proper Temple for the worship of Almighty God, appropriate to the surrounding circumstances, and to the wealth of the neighborhood, and that it should be called Christ Church, Riverdale." Its original building is still in use as such, and was designated a New York City Landmark in 1967 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.