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.