Holy Beauty!

Manhattan resident Hillary Ferguson responds to Arianne Cohen's New York Magazine article, "Joachim's Temptation" (New York Magazine, Nov 27 2006):

Published in New York Magazine, December 11, 2006

To the Editor:

REGARDING ARIANNE COHEN'S article on the possible future of the First Baptist Church on West 79th Street [Intelligencer: "Joachim's Temptation," November 27]: When I moved to the city two years ago, I spent two nights in a hotel near the church. After wandering around Central Park, I returned to my hotel in the late-summer dusk and was stopped in my tracks by the warm glow of the church's stained glass. This remains one of my favorite and most soothing views in the city. A church is not merely a beautiful façade, and, as W. Lawrence Joachim, president of the church's board of trustees, noted, the building may not be "an end unto itself." However, in this busy city full of faceless buildings and crowded sidewalks, the church offers a pleasant reprieve to those passing by.

HILLARY FERGUSON, Manhattan