The choir is of the early fifteenth century, and is much more gracefully conceived than is any other portion of this nondescript edifice.
The transepts are square boxlike protuberances, which link the choir with the nave in most unappealing fashion.
In the interior the most astonishing features are the low truncated nave of three bays, the grimness of the walls of the entire fabric,—excepting the well-lighted and aspiring choir,—and the straight-backed pews.
The clerestory windows of the nave are semicircular, but the aisles are lighted by Gothic openings.
There are two altars, one at the choir entrance and the other in the apse, each surmounted by a triptych.
The windows of the choir-apse, tall, ample, and of admirable framing, are the chief glory of this not very beautiful, though interesting, church.[{324}]
St. Mary's is a late twelfth-century Romanesque structure, without transepts, but possessed of a towering apsidal choir.
The nave is an attenuated affair with no triforium, leaving a vast blank wall space, as though it were intended to have been decorated.
Dortmund's "Pfarr Kirche" was a former Dominican foundation. Its general proportions are far greater than those of any other of the city's churches. The nave is ample, and the great choir of four bays, with spacious, lofty windows, is of the same generous proportions.
The church dates only from the mid-fourteenth century, and its three-bayed nave is even later. The aisles of the nave are curious in that they are not of similar dimensions. That on the street side is separated from the nave proper by square piers, with a slender shaft running to the vaulting. The other aisle is more ample, and has its arched openings to the nave composed of four shafts superimposed upon a central cylinder.