Interior Requiem Windows - Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, New Amsterdam (New York, NY) - 1600-1700

Pictured above are 2 of windows that I acquired about one year ago. I have had such problems making decisions on what to do with these windows for a few reasons.

It is very hard to prove where these windows are from without some type of documentation. There is no doubt that they are old, quite old, probably pre-1700. There is a possibility that they are American, but they could be German, Dutch, or English. Only a absolute historical expert on furniture and window making could POSSIBLY identify an origin.

What follows is the story that the seller told me when I purchased them. Keep in mind that I DID NOT buy the windows because of the story, I bought them because they are incredible pieces of workmanship, and they were not out of my price range. Back to the story:

The grandfather of the seller found these windows in an old Brownstone somewhere in NYC. He did house clean outs, and kept what he liked. In this particular Brownstone were 4 of these windows, and some highly valuable personal pictures of Industrial Revolution tycoons and other famous people. Thus, these windows were put to the side, and the pictures were sold for tens of thousands of dollars. The grandson, who ended up selling me the windows kept them in his barn for decades before remembering they were there. He claims, that there was a note attached to one of the windows attributing them to the second church built in the New Amsterdam Colony, the Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. The note stated that they were Interior Requiem windows. The note, of course, is long gone. I did, of course, beg him to contact me if the note ever turned up, but haven't heard back in the last year.

So.....back to the windows. Pictured are the two larger windows, there are also two small windows, basically exact scaled down matches in form and design. These early windows have incredibly important features. Among them hand wrought iron brackets and hardware, an oak frame joined but hand cut wooden pins (incredible primitive craftsmanship), and lastly, hand blown/made window panes, of which some are still fully in place. Not to mention the original lead holding the window panes in place. These are incredible I am telling you.

The first problem is that most of the panes are broken, and the glass pieces tend to slip and slide out of place. I did have a professional window restorer look at them, but he would have had to take the entire frame apart and redo all of the window panes. I decided, for the time being, to use colored adhesive window stickers, that I cut to size to hold the glass pieces in place. I cleaned the panes, gently with soap and water, and Tiny amounts of Windex on the tougher spots.

I wanted to post these for a very very long time. They are not easy to capture on film, and I didn't have enough room to shoot all 4 of them. So it is what it is. I always welcome opinions, ideas, and arguments. Hope you enjoyed this post.