Inside the Church
When the church was built in 1917 and 1918, 73 stained glass windows from the Gorham Company of New York were installed: the three large rose windows, 32 windows in the dome, 11 in the ambulatory, the sacrament windows in the sanctuary (now the baptistry), and windows in the nave, transepts and behind the shrines. Also completed were the mosaics of saints in the sanctuary and the mosaics of women saints in the piers supporting the dome. All these stained glass windows and mosaics are still in place.
Work on the interior stopped here; a more pressing need was an addition to the overcrowded school. That
addition was completed in 1924.
In 1929, work on the church interior resumed with the installation of a Moeller organ. The DaPrato Statuary Company built a high altar, credence table, sedilia (priest's chair), pulpit, communion rail and two side altars for the church. These were made of Chiampo Rosa stone, soft pink in color, with Venetian mosaic inlays. Rising above the altar top was a baldachin (that is, a marble canopy) with a bronze crucifix set inside. Two white Carrara marble angels stood on either side of the main altar.
Gleb Werchovsky, a Ruthenian Catholic priest and artist, was commissioned in 1929 to design the art of the interior. Werchovsky employed Byzantine iconography throughout. The principal theme, the Tree of Life, is taken from the 12th-century mosaic in the Basilica of San Clemente in Rome.
See
The Art of Saint Clement Church for a detailed description.
