Architectural Description
Lower Long Cane Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church is
a rectangular wood-framed building measuring 44 x 64 feet. It rests on a
foundation of handmade brick piers, with a pierced brick curtain wall between
the piers added at a later date. The church is of simple meeting-house design
with a fully-engaged tetrastyle portico at the south or principal facade.
This Roman Doric portico, supported by four fluted, stuccoed-brick columns
resting on stone bases, features an unadorned entablature and a steeply-pitched
pediment with plain raking cornice and weatherboard-sided tympanum.
Within the portico is flushboard siding, an elevation wide-step to the two
four-paneled single stairways, and two eighteen-light sash pocket windows
with full-width, single-leaf workable louvered shutters on the second
level. All other elevations are clad in weatherboard siding. On both the
first and gallery levels of either side elevation are six eighteen-light
sash pocket windows featuring a thick horizontal muntin at their centers
that produces the visual effect of a nine-over-nine double-hung sash. All
have full-width, single-leaf louvered shutters. Two identical window with
identical shutters appear on the first level of the north (rear) elevation
to light the pulpit. A single-leaf paneled entrance with exterior masonry
stair, landing, and metal railing provides ingress and egress for the minister
near the northwestern corner of the rear elevation.
The entire building features a boxed cornice, but without
returns on the north (rear) elevation. The pitched roof was originally covered
in wooden shingles, recovered with wooden shingles in 1910, and covered
with diamond-shaped asbestos shingles by ca. 1950. A small brick flue pierces
the roof ridge at the center of the building.
The interior auditorium is two stories in height with flushboard
walls and ceiling. Congregational seating is divided by two aisles and a
center partition. Four sections of historic hand-planed pews with turned spindle
arm rests, hymnal racks, and communion cup holders fill the first level of
the sanctuary. A ten-foot deep gallery on the south, east, and west sides
was historically supported only by two square wooden pillars at each corner,
near the front entrances. The gallery features a continuously-paneled knee
wall, ranked wooden floors, and simple handmade pews. Slender iron rods,
anchored to the roof structure, were added later to provide support. An
elevated stage with historic wooden pulpit occupies the north end of the
sanctuary and is flanked by two small anterooms. Simple, milk-glass globe
lighting is present throughout the sanctuary. Also visible at the center
of the room is a stuccoed-brick chimney flue no longer in use.
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