The Korean Philadelphia Presbyterian Church was built in a combination of styles--Romanesque, Moorish, and Renaissance. The basic blocks of a Romanesque church are featured in the design, but there is even less emphasis on the vertical than in most Romanesque-style buildings. The pointed gable, the central arch with arched portals below are generally Romanesque, but all the details of the facade are flattened out. Of the five uniform portal arches, the second and third are shallow and bricked in. The other three arches are true doors with lintels. But all three portals, shallow and open, are straight cuts into the surface of the wall with almost no embrasure beyond a slight effect from the octagonal columns that support the arches.
The entire central arch of the church's facade is filled with red brick work which is, in turn, studded with a pattern of terra cotta tiles in yellow, blue and white, and a strip of terra cotta work that divides the lower arch from the upper arch and the half-window. The tile work is in abstract designs that have the look of Islamic art. But the terra cotta beneath them features Renaissance versions of classical decorations.
The upper window on the wings of the facade has a Moorish look as well. The tall narrow arch of the window area is in relief against a section of the upper wall that features a band of blue and white floral design in terra cotta. This band is reminiscent of Renaissance decoration. But the window itself, with four closely set columns of white brick on a steeply splayed sill seems Moorish. The glazed brick that fills the top of the window arch, is repeated in the articulated keystone of the arch.
The First Congregational Church is a Gothic Revival building, though its heavy central section and relatively undecorated facade are reminiscent of Romanesque style. The central tower is rather low and heavy, but the few decorative elements that it does have, all posse...