File:First Presbyterian Church, Seneca Falls, New York - 20220416.jpg

English: First Presbyterian Church, 23 Cayuga Street, Seneca Falls, New York, April 2022. A contributing property to the NRHP-listed Seneca Falls Village Historic District, this attractive building of red brick accented with rusticated Ohio sandstone was completed in 1873 to a design by Syracuse-based architect Archimedes Russell. Here we see an iteration of the Victorian Gothic style whose heavy Romanesque Revival influence is demonstrated by, for example, the relatively small size (13 feet in diameter) and simple tracery of the rose window, as well as the squat dimensions of the towers and especially of the pyramidal copper roofs that crown them. Elsewhere, the usual trappings of pointed arches, massive stepped buttresses, and prominent vertical orientation predominate. Note also the unusual gable truss above the rose window. In the interior are found a Tiffany window in the second story of the sanctuary, additional stained glass by the New York City firm of J. and R. Lamb; a large two-manual, 46-stop, 1,908-pipe organ manufactured by the W. W. Kimball Company of Chicago, and in the tower, a 3,500-pound Troy bell by Meneely & Kimberly. The church's overall appearance was quoted in the contemporary local press as "one of the most complete and elegant structures for divine worship that exists in Central New York… a lasting monument to Christian zeal and devotion". Founded in 1807, First Presbyterian is the earliest religious congregation to have been organized in Seneca Falls. Services were led by Rev. Jedediah Chapman first in a converted barn, then in a series of purpose-built structures, built in 1817 and 1842 respectively on the same site as the present church. Construction on the present church began in 1871 and involved the recycling of some of the building materials used in the previous one, which soon led to structural problems: within a few years the side walls showed signs of spreading, an issue that was resolved by reinforcing the exterior walls with iron rods and bolts, and these same deficiencies may have been a factor in the much later (1950s-era) removal of what was once a proper steeple on the south tower, which had previously risen to a height of 166 feet above street level. Aside from serving as spiritual home to Seneca Falls' Presbyterian community on a continuous basis, the church is also notable as the venue of the 1923 conference of the National Women's Party, which saw the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention as well as the drafting of a proposed Constitutional amendment guaranteeing the equality of the sexes, in other words the birth of the Equal Rights Amendment.