people have gathered at All Saints' for worship, fellowship, and learning. We are delighted that All Saints' has been named to the National Register of Historic Places. In 2004 we celebrated our Sesquicentennial. Our founder was the Rev. John David Ogilby (at right), a professor of ecclesiastical history at the General Seminary, who had come to the area and built an estate which he named Briar Cliffe after his ancestral home in Ireland. (Years later, the estate was purchased by Walter W. Law, who adopted "Briarcliff Manor" as the name for the village when it was incorporated in 1902.)

Dr. Ogilby had recently returned from a trip to England. There he had visited the historic church at Bemerton -- once the parish of George Herbert, the poet and clergyman -- and he commissioned the architect Richard Upjohn to design a a wayside sanctuary resembling the Bemerton church on one corner of his estate east of Ossining (which was then called Sing Sing).

Click here to see a photograph of George Herbert's church in Bemerton, England.

Dr. Ogilby did not live to preside at the opening service at All Saints', which took place on December 13, 1854. The Banner of the Cross reported on the opening service in its December 23, 1854, issue, including an eyewitness account:

Frederick Ogilby, Dr. John Ogilby's brother and a member of the staff of Trinity Wall Street, preached the first sermon. The church was incorporated in 1863. By 1910 the church was too small for the congregation, and parishioners gathered stones from their estates for the construction of new walls.

In 1952 the organ was installed. The pipes came from Germany and casework was made by Amish craftsmen in New Holland, Pennsylvania. The parish house was built in the International Style in 1949 and expanded to include classrooms and the rector's study in the late 1950s. About 1905 the women of the parish built a small fieldstone parish house on a rocky rise at the back of the rectory property on Scarborough Road; this was used until recently for meetings and services.

Over the years the life of the church has reflected changes in the surrounding communities. In 1901 the records state that "owing to reduced revenue of the Parish, caused by social changes in the neighborhood and consequent decrease in attendance," the vestry considered closing the church's doors. But by 1910 the church was so crowded on Sundays that boys from the nearby Holbrook School were sitting outside on the stone wall during the service. At this stage the architect William Henry Deacy was authorized to design an extension, with parishioners once again donating stone for the walls from their estates. Summer visitors at nearby Briarcliff Lodge (later owned by the Kings College) took great interest in parish life. But in the years following World War I and the Great Depression, Briarcliff Lodge closed, many of the families maintaining large estates moved away, and the Holbrook School shut down. In 1935 the Rev. George Bratt, the rector of St. Paul's Church, Ossining, began to serve as priest-in-charge at All Saints, shuttling back and forth between the two towns every Sunday to preside at four services. Sometimes, as he would say, only angels attended the early services at All Saints', but within a year membership had increased, and by 1940 there were twenty-six supporting member families. The Parish Hall was added in 1950.


In 1952 the Rev. William Arnold became rector, and under his leadership the church grew enormously. To accommodate the burgeoning Sunday school, members constructed an addition to the parish hall in the International Style. A few of Fr. Arnold's parishioners still participate actively in parish life. The author John Cheever was a parishioner here and wrote in his journals about his experiences of worship in our sanctuary, and the abstract artist Brice Marden grew up here and served as an acolyte; today All Saints' continues to be a place where many people in the arts make their spiritual home.