Tour St. Hubert's Chapel, a Tiffany-designed church in the middle of a lake

Wealthy family men have been known to go to great lengths to keep their wives comfortable, and Francis S. Kinney was no exception. In 1885, the tobacco tycoon started acquiring 5,000 acres of land, constructed a country home on it that grew to encompass 20,000 square feet, and named it Kinnelon — very impressive, but not unprecedented.

What sets Kinney apart in the history of devoted spouses is what he did in the spring of 1886. Because the nearest Catholic church was 7 miles away, he built a chapel for his wife, Mary, and their children on the estate — in the middle of Lake Kinnelon. In 1889, he went further and commissioned Louis Comfort Tiffany to model the structure after a medieval chapel from the era in which St. Hubert, its namesake, lived. Hubert was a French-born nobleman and patron saint of hunters who was canonized in 743.

Kinney's heirless son Morris left the property to his lifelong friend, John Talbot, who developed the private, planned Smoke Rise Club Community on it. The population grew too large to use the 25-seat chapel, and after decades of disuse and vandalism, it fell into a serious state of disrepair.

But recent ongoing restoration efforts culminating in work by the nonprofit Kinnelon Heritage Conservation Society have helped bring it back to its former glory.

The editors at Wayne Magazine were recently privileged to get a personal tour from Tom Kline, lead conservator of the St. Hubert's Chapel Conservation Committee, which was arranged with the help of Lisa Masterson, owner of Kinnelon Real Estate.

Door to the past

Tiffany designed the chapel's entrance, which in 2003 was restored with new wood and hundreds of recast bronze pieces.

The bronze bas-relief dedication tablet designed by Swiss-born Tiffany artist Jacob Adolphus Holzer depicts St. Hubert as imagined in ancient artifacts.

Preserving original artistry

Visitors enter the baptistry and are greeted by a plaster sculpture, "The Angel of Resurrection," by Antonio Tantardini. The statue was originally placed on the tomb of Francis Kinney's mother, Mary Cogswell Kinney, a friend of Mary Todd Lincoln who was one of five women present as President Abraham Lincoln lay dying. Using hundreds of pieces of thick glass precisely fractured to better reflect light, Tiffany created the Great Celtic Cross Window, which was removed for restoration in 1993 and reinstalled a year later.

Inside the chapel, a hammered brass scene of St. Hubert and his hunting hounds is seen above the fireplace. The clamshell-like holy water font is surrounded by abalone. Cori Kline was among preservationists who restored the altar to its original beauty.

The marble mosaic floor replicating patterns found in Roman ruins bears Tiffany's logo, which is embedded in the smaller circle at center.

Tiffany legacy

The chapel's Tiffany altar features gold leafing and hundreds of antique glass cabochons (polished but unfaceted gems) set into white plaster. The restoration process was painstaking, and used glass fabricated in the same Kokomo, Indiana furnaces that Tiffany used in the 1880s, as well as Tiffany glass pieces Kline obtained in the 1980s that are now unavailable in the original greenish hue.

Angles and archangels in a relief

J.A. Holzer built this full plaster relief, which has been restored to date to show St. Eustache, the archangel Michael and St. Hubert against a background of foliage that spills onto the ceiling.

Timeless

An iron circular staircase housed behind the latticework doors in the sanctuary ascend about 20 feet to a platform. Above it, three large bronze bells chime the hour. A trapdoor overhead leads to the clock room, home to the E. Howard & Company Tower Clock, which is wound by hand on a weekly basis, and strikes the hour throughout the year.

For more information about touring St. Hubert's Chapel, go to kinnelonheritage.org.

Cindy Schweich Handler is the editor of Montclair and Wayne Magazines, and a writer for The Record and Northjersey.com who frequently covers health issues. Email: Handler@northjersey.com; Twitter: @CindyHandler

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Photos: St. Hubert's Chapel, a Tiffany-designed church in the middle of a lake