50 Oldest Churches of NYC: Woodrow United Methodist Church

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In November, 1771, Francis Asbury, called the farmers together at the house of Peter Van Pelt which became the birthplace of the Methodist church on Staten Island. In May of 1787, a meeting was called for the purpose of establishing the Woodrow Methodist Church.

The first church in this site was built of wood, smaller than the present building.  In 1842 that church was struck by lightning. The building was torn down, and the materials sold to many of the worshipers. That same year the present church was built on the same site. It was located with the front facing the road. On December 25th of 1842 it was dedicated.

Woodrow United Methodist Church at 1109 Woodrow Road in Woodrow, Staten Island, New York is a wood-frame, clapboard-sided, temple-form Greek Revival style building. It features a portico with four Doric order columns supporting a plain entablature and unadorned pediment. Above the portico is a three-stage, open bell tower and spire in a vernacular Italianate style added in 1876. It is the oldest Methodist Church on Staten Island.

   In 1850 two acres of land were purchased for a parsonage site. The parsonage was built in that same year. A frame structure was built in 1884 as a meeting hall. This was on the easterly side of the church.  The hall burned in the fire of April, 1963, which leveled Staten Island’s South Shore. In 1971 the church hall was rebuilt.

 The burial grounds surrounding the church are older than the church organization. The oldest grave site known to be used is marked with a tombstone dated 1767.

On December 1, 1976 the Wesley Methodist Church, and the South Shore Presbyterian Church which had been meeting in Eltingville, on Richmond Avenue, and the Woodrow United Methodist Church  merged in a decision to become one church and to meet at the Woodrow location.

United States National Historical place and in 1967 it was registered as a New York City Landmark.

 

 

50 Oldest Churches of NYC: St. Ann’s and the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church

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The National Historic Landmark church now known as Saint Ann and the Holy Trinity was built as The Church of the Holy Trinity by Brooklyn paper manufacturer Edgar Bartow who wanted a magnificent edifice for the City of Brooklyn, with pews that were rent-free. Construction of the church began in 1844 on the highest point in Brooklyn Heights, which was then sparsely settled with some large merchants’ homes, small homes and shops and a number of unfinished streets and vacant lots. Minard LaFever designrf the church and adjoining chapel and rectory.

The church is an important example of Gothic Revival architecture in America, the richly ornamented church is notable for its elaborately vaulted roof and extensive suite of stained glass windows by William Jay Bolton. The church’s official opening was on April 25, 1847, although the building was not entirely completed. A 275-foot tower was designed and installed by 1869. Its spire was the most visible landmark in Brooklyn and was used in conjunction with the spire of Trinity Church Wall Street by ship captains to navigate into the New York harbor. The church removed the spire in 1906 because of concern about falling stone and the high cost of maintenance.

During the Cold War in the 1950s, there was a clash between the bishop and rival factions within congregation which eventually led to the dissolution of the church in 1957. The building was closed and stood mostly vacant for more than a decade.

In 1969, nearby St. Ann’s Church, the oldest Episcopal congregation in Brooklyn, sold its property to The Packer Collegiate Institute next door and moved four blocks into the long-empty Holy Trinity building. St. Ann’s took the new name of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity in honor of the building’s heritage. In 1979, the New York Landmarks Conservancy intervened to save the aging church and stained glass, and in 1983 the St. Ann Center for Restoration and the Arts was founded.

50 Oldest Churches of NYC: New Lots Reformed Dutch Church

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New Lots Reformed Dutch Church and Cemetery located at 630 New Lots Avenue in East New York, Brooklyn, New York was built in 1823–1824 and is a small, rectangular wood-frame building sheathed in clapboard. It has a pitched gable roof and sits on a rough stone foundation. Adjacent to the church is the cemetery divided into two sections. The older section dates to the 17th century and includes burials of Revolutionary War soldiers and slaves. The present cemetery was established in 1841. The cemetery is one of only a handful of private cemeteries left in the entire city.

At the time the church was built, New Lots was a small community surrounded by farms. It was part of Flatbush, and got its name from being the location of the new lots of land available for settlement. This was not a town of wealthy merchants; these were farmers, without a lot of money. A hurricane, which knocked down a great number of oak trees provided the wood for the church. Parishioners  harvested the trees, and then allowed them to season for almost two years, before  cutting the lumber into boards in preparation to build a new church.

In May of 1823, people from near and far came to build the new church in a massive barn raising. These volunteers worked tirelessly to build the church building, which was put up by their efforts alone, and is reported to have cost only $35.00. The entire building is built with notched and joined timber, using wooden pegs to secure the wood, not nails. That craftsmanship has lasted in its original form for almost two hundred years.

The only structural changes to the building occurred in 1990, when the building finally began to lean. A large truss beam cracked causing the building to be declared unusable until it was fixed. The congregation raised the money to fix the damage, and the church was back in use in 1991.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

50 Oldest Churches of NYC: French Evangelical Church

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The small brick church building at 126 West 16th Street in New York City, had been built around 1835 when the Chelsea neighborhood was just developing. It first housed the Catholic Apostolic Church, an offshoot of the Catholic Church founded in the 1820s. Among the sect’s strong beliefs was that the Second Coming was imminent—precisely it would happen in 1835.  As it turned out, 1835 came and went and the date of the Second Coming was pushed off.

.  The French Evangelical Church was a Presbyterian congregation founded in 1846 by the Belgium-born Antoine Frederick Twyeffort. The French Evangelical Church was a Presbyterian congregation founded in 1846 by the Belgium-born Antoine Frederick Twyeffort.  The 16th Street church was sold to the French Evangelical Church in 1885

The French Evangelical Church commissioned Alfred D. F. Hamlin to remodel the out-of-style church.  The architect redid the interiors and updated the façade in the German version of Romanesque Revival called Rundbogenstil.  The result was a chunky mass with a central arch outlined in dentil brickwork.  Well above the sidewalk, arched entrance doors on either side carried on the rhythm of the collection of arches in the main structure.

Then, after 125 years in its brick home, the church made new plans.  In August 2010 it sought proposals from developers to gut the building, renovate the cellar, first and second floors for church use, and build an 11-story residential tower above it. As the building began rising in 2013, residents complained.  The resulting sore thumb would not only diminish the important 1835 church next door, but successfully obliterate the charm of the block.

In 2022 the church is enveloped in the glass and cement sky rise residential structure. It is listed at the Ephesians Mennonite Church. A central doorway was added to the ground floor of the brick structure and 11 stories of apartments loom overhead.

50 Oldest Churches of NYC: First Chinese Presbyterian Church

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The First Chinese Presbyterian Church on 61 Henry Street in New York City was built between 1817-19. The land for the church was donated by Revolutionary War patriot, Colonial Henry Rutgers. It first opened it’s doors in 1819 as the Market Street Dutch Reformed Church. In 1864, the Dutch Reformed Church disbanded. The church building was then bought by Hanson K. Corning in 1866 and it was transferred to the Trustees of New York Presbytery to be occupied by the Church of Sea and Land which served the seamen community in the area.

In 1868, mission work began within the Chinese community in New York City. On December 18, 1910, the First Chinese Presbyterian Church was incorporated at 223 East 31 Street. In 1951 the church moved to 61 Henry Street, sharing the historic church building with the Sea and Land Church. The Sea and Land Church was dissolved in June of 1972.

The church building has the distinction of being the second oldest in New York City. In 1966 the church building and the 1824 Erben pipe organ were designated as historic landmarks.

50 Oldest Churches of NYC: Church of the Ascension

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The Church of the Ascension was incorporated as a Protestant Episcopal parish of the Diocese of New York on October 1, 1827. On April 15, 1828 the cornerstone for the new church was placed in a lot on the north side of Canal Street, just east of Broadway. This first building resembled a Greek temple. in 1839, a fire started in the lumber of a carpenter’s shop at the rear of the Church of the Ascension and smoke and flames appeared during a Sunday service. The church and adjoining Sunday School building were destroyed. The Dutch Reformed congregation at East Ninth Street and Astor Place, east of Broadway, made their church available for the homeless parish.

The new Church of the Ascension, designed by Richard Upjohn, was consecrated by Bishop Onderdonk on November 5, 1841. The parish house designed by McKim, Mead and White took a previously existing building and turned it into a Northern Renaissance-inspired building of yellow brick with bottle-glass windows. President Tyler, a widower, married Julia Gardiner, daughter of David Gardiner, at the Church of the Ascension on June 26, 1844. He was the first U.S. president to marry while in office.

In response to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the rector Donald Bradshaw Aldrich opened the doors of the church 24-hours a day for prayer and meditation, earning the church the name “The Church of the Open Door”. This policy was in effect for decades: about 30,000 people visited the church in the 1960s. Although the doors are not still open around the clock, the stained-glass windows are illuminated at night.

On September 11, 2001, New Yorkers, coated in ash from the buildings’ collapse, trudged uptown past the church. The rector, curate and staff rushed water and paper towels to use as makeshift dust masks out to the front of the church. The church doors were opened and people who were dazed, exhausted and in shock rested and took comfort in the church before heading further on their way uptown to find some way home.

The church became a National Historic Landmark in 1987. Both the church and parish house are part of the Greenwich Village Historic District, designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1969.

50 Oldest Churches of NYC: Trinity Church Interior

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Trinity Church is a historic parish church in the Episcopal Diocese of New York, at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City.

The current building is the third constructed for Trinity Church, and was designed by Richard Upjohn in the Gothic Revival style. The first Trinity Church building was a single-story rectangular structure facing the Hudson River, which was constructed in 1698 and destroyed in the Great New York City Fire of 1776. The second Trinity Church was built facing Wall Street and was consecrated in 1790. The current church building was erected from 1839 to 1846 and was the tallest building in the United States until 1869, as well as the tallest in New York City until 1890. In 1876–1877 a reredos and altar were erected in memory of William Backhouse Astor Sr., to the designs of architect Frederick Clarke Withers, who extended the rear.

The tower of Trinity Church currently contains 23 bells, the heaviest of which weighs 2,700 pounds. A project to install a new ring of 12 additional change ringing bells was initially proposed in 2001 but put on hold in the aftermath of the September attacks, which took place three blocks north of the church. This project came to fruition in 2006, thanks to funding from the Dill Faulkes Educational Trust. These new bells form the first ring of 12 change-ringing bells ever installed in a church in the United States.

Trinity manages real estate properties with a combined worth of over $6 billion as of 2019. Trinity’s main building is a National Historic Landmark as well as a New York City designated landmark. It is also a contributing property to the Wall Street Historic District, a NRHP district created in 2007.

50 Oldest Churches of NYC: Christ Church and Holy Family

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The Christ Church and Holy Family  parish located in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn was organized in 1835, and the church building was completed in 1841-42.

Christ Church was founded on the wave of affluence and confident urban expansion following the opening of the Erie Canal, an economic transformation wrought in both New York City and Brooklyn in the 1830s.

It was designed in the English Gothic Revival style by Richard Upjohn who designed Trinity Church, Wall Street in New York and the gates of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. He lived down the street.

The altar, altar railing, reredos, pulpit, lectern and chairs were added in 1917 and were designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

The parish holds an annual Saint Francis Festival in October, with Blessing of Animals. The church hosts a number of musical events throughout the year, especially as a part of the Gotham Early Music Society series, and yearly Christmas caroling through Cobble Hill.

The building was destroyed by fire in 1939, and was rebuilt. In recent years, the church has been difficult to maintain, and additionally suffered lightning strikes. The tower began to collapse in 2012, tragically killing a passer-by. The height of the tower was greatly reduced, a large amount of scaffolding was erected, all by order of the NYC Department of Buildings who also ordered that the nave be vacated.

50 Oldest Churches of NYC: New Utrecht Reformed Church

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New Utrecht Reformed Church,  1827 83rd Street at 18th Avenue Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York is the fourth oldest Reformed Church in America.

The church was established in 1677 by ethnic Dutch residents in the town of New Utrecht, Brooklyn, several years after the English took over New Netherland (now Manhattan). Previously, the inhabitants of New Utrecht formed part of the congregations of Flatbush, Flatlands and Brooklyn.

The cemetery was consecrated in 1654 with 1300 dead interred there. The earliest recorded burial was in 1654. Members of such notable early Dutch settlers as the Van Pelts, Van Brunts, Cropseys, Cowenhovens and Bennetts are buried there.

During the Revolutionary War the British made New Utrecht their base of operations for the Battle of Long Island, the first large-scale British invasion of the colonies.

The Liberty Pole, the sixth on the site of the present church, was originally erected in 1783 at the end of the Revolutionary War to harass departing British troops. The Liberty Pole marks the spot over which the American flag first waved in the town of New Utrecht. The original pole was erected by our forefathers at the Evacuation of the British, November 1783, amid the firing of cannons and demonstration of joy.”

The present church was built in 1828 of stones taken from the original church, built in 1700. It is a rare example of a rural church in a picturesque setting in New York City. Construction was supervised by US Army engineer, Rene Edward De Russy, who led the construction of Fort Hamilton at New York harbor. The parish house was built in 1892 and the parsonage in 1906. This sketch is of the parish house.

The church was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1966; the parish house and the cemetery received landmark status in 1998. Both the church and the cemetery are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

50 Oldest Churches of NYC: Congregation Anshe Slonim

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Constructed in 1849-50, Congregation Anshe Slonim Synagogue, at 172 Norfolk St. on the Lower East Side, was commissioned for Congregation Anshe Chesed, the third Jewish congregation to be established in New York. This large and influential congregation was also the second group in New York to embrace the Jewish Reform movement.

The land the building stands on was once owned by peg leg Peter Stuyvesant, the Governor of New Amsterdam. He wanted to evict the Jews from the Dutch West India Company, saying, “The Jews who have arrived would nearly all like to remain here, but learning that they—with their customary usury and deceitful trading with Christians—were very repugnant, and fearing that owing to their present indigence they might become a charge in the coming winter, we have deemed it useful to require them in a friendly way to depart; praying most seriously that the deceitful race be not allowed further to infect and trouble this new colony.“His bigoted request was denied by the Dutch West India Company.

After his death the land went to his daughter Cornelia Stuyvesant. After she died the land ended up in the hands of Daniel Rhoades, who sold them to “The Trustees of the Congregation of Anshi Chesed,” on April 11, 1849.

Early members of the congregation were part of a wave of recent Ashkenazi—that is, European Jews—immigrants from Germany, Holland, and Poland, and were “of a low social and economic status” according to the preservation commission. It was once home to one of the city’s—and the country’s—largest Jewish congregations.

The neighborhood changed and the building faced neglect and disrepair over the years. In 1986 Spanish sculptor Angel Orensanz, who wandered by while looking for studio space fell in love with the then decrepit building. Every stained glass window was broken and vandals had caused severe damage. Regardless, he purchased the building for $500,000. He  installed water and electricity, replaced windows, and repaired the roof. He estimated that he poured $5 million into the restoration. He had a dream of converting the building into an artist colony, with living and studio space, but that never came to be. Instead in 1988  the Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts was officially inaugurated. Eventually it housed a studio for Orensanz and a gallery of his work. It is used as a arts, culture, and events center.

The building is a landmark of New York City Jewish history, its official Landmarks Preservation Commission status was bestowed in 1987. It no longer is home to a religious congregation but it is a home for those who worship the arts.