All Souls Church 1894, enlarged and modified in 1910 and 1915-16

All Souls Church is one of two ecclesiastical structures Reid designed in the Catskills of New York State, the second being a church for the Twilight Park resort community several miles away from Onteora. All Souls is unique in being the only non-residential building for which Reid did both the architectural design and the interior decoration. From the beginning, his hand was everywhere in the building: he drafted the plans, chose the materials (including the local fieldstone used for the exterior), and supervised the construction process.

The exteriors of other buildings Reid designed for the Onteora community exemplified an Arts and Crafts aesthetic and also borrowed heavily from closely related aspects of English cottage and American vernacular (especially Shingle style) architecture. In contrast, All Souls is Gothic Revival in design, with a squat exterior, a square tower with battlements (but missing the original pointed steeple, lost in a fire), stepped buttresses, and lancet windows. In 1910, Reid added a transept and expanded the chancel, increasing the seating capacity by seventy-five per cent. Further alterations were done by Reid in 1915 and 1916 to add a sacristy and remodel the windows.

Unlike the building’s exterior, the interior is a magnificent demonstration of a thorough-going Arts and Crafts union of the arts. The murals framing the altar show praying and music-making angels: a subject that underscores All Souls’s non-denominational character by avoiding reference to specific creeds. There were originally two murals on the arched surface above each side of the chancel, but that program was substantially augmented in 1910, when the original murals were repainted and another was added above the altar. Reid painted the murals and designed most of the applied art objects, including the light brackets, the fireplace tools, and probably even the chairs flanking the altar. The most notable exceptions to this are the stained-glass windows, which were purchased in 1916 from Heaton, Butler and Bayne of London, a prominent Gothic Revival stained-glass company that supplied churches in Britain and its empire, as well as the United States.

Still in use as a church, All Souls was added in 1993 to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, which identifies sites considered worthy of preservation because of their artistic value and/or historical significance.