In 1979, when the new Tompkins Hose firehouse was under construction, a proposal to blast the shale bedrock for the foundation suddenly shook the community into action. For right next door to the firehouse was St. Andrew's Church, with its nineteen priceless Tiffany stained glass windows.

Professor Lawrence Majewski of the Fine Art Department of New York University and a consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote a letter of protest about the blasting to Beacon city officials:

"These windows are precious works of art as well as being a significant part of the structure of St. Andrew's. I cannot emphasize enough how valuable these windows are. If they are damaged they could not be replaced or even restored as Tiffany glass of this quality is no longer produced."

St. Andrew's has three Tiffany memorial windows and 16 Tiffany ornamental windows--all produced at Tiffany Studio in 1900, when St. Andrew's was being built. Arguably the most beautiful of the memorial windows in the church is the Rider Memorial Window, called the "Resurrection Angel." The angel's design is attributed to Frederick Wilson, the artist who headed the Ecclesiastical Department at Tiffany Studio from 1897 to 1923. Wilson's mastery of opalescent stained glass coincide with building boom of new churches in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the subsequent demand for stained glass memorial windows.. And Wilson's church windows, featuring Old and New Testament figures and scenes, were considered the most beautiful works of glass art of the times.

John Rider evidently thought so, too, for he ordered from Tiffany a ten- by six-foot memorial window for his wife Cornelia who had died in the summer of 1900--just as work on the new St. Andrew's had begun. The Rider window depicts a Wilson-designed angel looking toward heaven, symbolic of the Resurrection. Also symbolic of the rising are the clusters of lilies in the foreground. The Sea of Galilee is behind the angel in iridescent blue glass. There are two other memorial windows at St. Andrew's: "The Good Shepherd" and "Saint Andrew," as well as 16 ornamental Tiffany windows with geometric designs.

St. Andrew's Church and its Tiffany windows are a community treasure ... to be admired by all and preserved forever.