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A local non-profit is fighting to save West-Park Presbyterian Church on 86th and Amsterdam, which we recently learned may be getting razed to make way for an apartment building.
The Center at West Park, a performing arts group based in the historic building, is asking for help to preserve the landmarked Romanesque style church it has called home for the last five years. The church is seeking its own demolition.
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The History
Labeled by the Landmarks Preservation Commission as “one of the best examples of a Romanesque Revival style religious structure in New York City,” the West Park Presbyterian Church has deep roots in the Upper West Side and citywide. It was founded in 1852 as the 84th Street Presbyterian Church and was located on 11th Avenue (today’s West End Avenue). It was the first Presbyterian congregation on the Upper West Side, 15 members strong.
By the 1880s, the congregation grew and, accordingly, outgrew its wood chapel constructed in 1854 by architect Leopold Eidlitz. The church purchased five lots at the northeast corner of West 86th and 10th Avenue (today’s Amsterdam Avenue) in 1883 and enlisted Eidlitz “to plan a brick, Victorian Gothic-style chapel on the eastern end of the site. The building was completed in 1885. The western end of the lot was left open for the future expansion of the church.”
Architect Henry Kilburn was hired by the newly renamed Park Presbyterian Church in 1889 to develop the western lots for a larger main church and to incorporate Eidlitz’s chapel design. The cornerstone was laid on May 16, 1889 after construction began about a month earlier. The church opened is doors on May 18, 1890.
1893. Image extracted from page 377 of King’s Handbook of New York City … by KING, Moses. Original held and digitized by the British Library.
“The West-Park Presbyterian Church was formed in 1911 when the Park Presbyterian Church merged with the West Presbyterian Church, which was founded in 1829 in Greenwich Village and later moved to 42nd Street. Kilburn’s design remains intact, and [the] building retains its visual prominence on the Upper West Side.”
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The Current Struggle
Today’s total congregation stands at 12 people, and maintaining the church is not economically feasible for it. “The Church has nearly been bankrupted by its ownership of the deteriorating building, spending well over $1 million of its limited budget over the last decade and using loans from the Presbytery of New York to address emergency repairs,” a spokesperson for West-Park Presbyterian told ILTUWS.
RELATED: Landmarked Church Looks Skyward for Solutions to Help it Survive
The church plans to seek a hardship exemption from the Landmarks Preservation Commission on May 5 before appearing before Community Board 7 on June 1; this hardship exemption would reverse its landmark designation and allow the church’s demolition to begin.
Facing disbandment of its 12 congregants and the potential of having to sell the church “as is” with the landmark status intact, the congregation feels it has no choice but to plan for demolition with Alchemy Properties.
“The congregation needs a new plan to survive,” explained the spokesperson, who added that various experts were consulted to “evaluate different scenarios and find if they would provide a reasonable return following renovation and restoration of the building.” But “no such scenario exists.”
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The Future
A mixed-use building would rise in place of the 133-year-old structure and the congregation would have 10,000 square feet of raw space to build out as it sees fit. But the future is uncertain for its primary tenant, The Center at West Park (CWP), even with the approval of a hardship.
“We would be without a space and would need to completely reinvent. It is very difficult to find spaces for artists in the city,” said Zachary Tomlinson, CWP’s Artistic Director, noting that most of its revenue comes from ticket sales and renting the space for various cultural events and efforts.
Those events and efforts have made the West 86th Street location a busy locale for the arts, thriving in fact. The space hosts approximately 100 different events throughout the year, has an artist in residence almost every week, and is the headquarters for the Broadway Bound Kids summer camp. CWP also rents the space to another Christian congregation on Sundays, noting that West-Park Presbyterian has not held any in-person services in over two years, and its only activity at the site is an open mic night on Fridays.
West-Park attributes its limited in-person presence to “ongoing unsafe building conditions at the Church and recent concerns related to the COVID pandemic [which] have led to the congregation relying on virtual meetings for services and Bible study.”
Tomlinson acknowledged that its landlord, West-Park Presbyterian, does not have the necessary financial resources to sustain the property long-term — but added that the church did not have them before the building was landmarked in 2010, and this deficit is the reason why the Center at West Park was founded.
“The Center was created because there was not a sufficient congregation,” according to Tomlinson. It was intended to be a long-term partnership, a joint effort with the local community and the congregation to fill a void in the neighborhood and to eventually raise enough money to restore the building.
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CWP remains committed to that agreement and says it bears the church’s fiscal responsibilities. “We pay a modest rent, but we also put a lot of money into the property,” Tomlinson said. He says this includes paying for regular maintenance, cleaning, repairs, utilities, as well as electrical and boiler repairs and ongoing projects for fire and egress safety. He also tells us CWP replaced the community house roof (with the church) and a broken-down staircase.
The initial 2017 agreement between CWP and West Park Presbyterian was for one year. CWP later signed a five-year-lease with a right to renew. CWP attempted to exercise that right but the church disputed it, according to Tomlinson, leaving the cultural center worried for what the future holds for its patrons and artists who have come to rely on it.
Tomlinson says that it’s more than worry; it’s frustration, because he claims CWP would be able to financially sustain the property through the next five-year lease term and likely beyond.
West-Park Presbyterian disagrees and claims that CWP has not paid for major repairs and has defaulted on its lease. “The Center has not demonstrated the capacity both to be able to meet its current obligations to the Church and to raise the funds that would be needed to restore the building. Expert analysis of the building’s conditions estimate a need of $50 million in order to fully restore the immediate interior and exterior needs, and does not include ongoing maintenance.”
CWP is cognizant that a complete restoration is not in the cards immediately. But CWP reported that it has a beginning stage fund-raising campaign to achieve just that. Tomlinson estimates the total price tag between $20-25 million, versus West-Park’s estimate of $50 million. The sandstone façade needs to be restored. “That’s the biggest project.” The stone is wearing away and crumbling in dust or sand-sized bits. The roof over the sanctuary is the other big project.
“The church plans to seek a hardship exemption from the Landmarks Preservation Commission on May 5 before appearing before Community Board 7 on June 1; this hardship exemption would reverse its landmark designation and allow the church’s demolition to begin.”
Approval of such an exemption would open up all sorts challenges to landmarking.
The church has no business seeking such an exemption.
Better would be redevelopment of the building as something else on the inside. If the hardship exemption is granted the church will be sold and, as the article makes clear, torn down, then replaced.
But it’s so ugly. Shouldn’t that be considered in the calculus of deciding to give the church a decent burial and for the community to better itself.
Just what NYC needs, more redevelopment into soulless bland buildings for rich people to buy and never occupy.
this has been an eyesore for years, there is no real plan to make it work as it is, as a neighbor it needs to go. The shed has been there for close to 20 years,
If you are considering the purchase of a building that has a chance of being landmarked, don’t. You will never really own it.
There’s something not quite right here. I’ve been involved over the years with other landmarked churches and I find this situation very odd. Usually a church will fight tooth and nail to retain its building, and find all kinds of creative solutions as well. It seems as though the incredibly tiny congregation would rather die and let the building be torn down than reach out. I think it would be a tremendous shame and a wound to the neighborhood to lose this building. Some people have said it’s ugly, but I remember how it looked 40-50 years ago, when it was clean and not encumbered with scaffolding. It needs to be saved and restored, not replaced by another glass box.
You are free to buy it Margaret and fix it up to your liking.
“West-Park attributes its limited in-person presence to “ongoing unsafe building conditions at the Church and recent concerns related to the COVID pandemic [which] have led to the congregation relying on virtual meetings for services and Bible study.”
But is it safe for these events?:
“The space hosts approximately 100 different events throughout the year, has an artist in residence almost every week, and is the headquarters for the Broadway Bound Kids summer camp. CWP also rents the space to another Christian congregation on Sundays, noting that West-Park Presbyterian has not held any in-person services in over two years, and its only activity at the site is an open mic night on Fridays.”
Apparently, all too many people are willing to ignore the old – and true – adage that “a church is not a building; it is a congregation.” In this regard, the congregation’s needs MUST come first. If that means losing the building in order to survive, then that is what needs to happen.
As for CWP, I don’t see why the church could not simply guarantee CWP adequate space once the new building is built and the church gets its 10,000 square feet.
A house of worship, no matter how beautiful (or not) or even “historic,” is ultimately just a physical structure. What matters is whether those who use the physical structure for their spiritual needs are being properly served and attended to. That does not seem to be the case here. I actually like the current structure. But I also accept that it is not “doing its job.”
Let the church do what it needs to. Perhaps it can even convince the developer to include affordable units. And CWP can either find alternative space or, if absolutely necessary, temporarily disband until the new structure is built.
Ian, you are right on point. All those who are focused on how beautiful this structure is or was totally miss the issue at hand. The owner of the building WPPC clearly is not in a position to maintain the building and is taking what seems to be their only prudent option i.e. to sell the building and repurpose this site. Prohibiting them from exercising this option as the building continues to fall apart , puts those who occupy the building and the community at a greater risk with each passing day. Unless Landmark Conservancy or any other stakeholder is prepared to assist WPPC in the rehabilitation and maintenance of the structure with a substantial grant , they should not impede this church from executing what seems to be the responsible courses of action.
Keith:
Thank you for your kind words.
Now there is a new “angle” being used by some who are opposing the rescinding of the landmark designation: they are accusing the church of deliberately allowing the building to go into serious disrepair so that they can have the designation rescinded.
This is as cynical and mean-spirited (and wrong) as anything can possibly be. Landmarking inherently comes with added costs for maintaining the landmark. If the building owner has no way to meet those costs, then obviously the building will begin to go into disrepair (or other adverse things, like loss of services, will occur).
This accusation also ignores the Herculean efforts of (former) Pastor Brashear to find a compromise solution – ALL of which were rejected by the “community.” (In one case, he was able to get a developer to agree to demolish only a small portion of the property and building a smaller building. The community rejected that as well. Which is one of the things that brought us here.)
I would add one more thought. With all the screaming about the separation of Church and State, and particularly against the way the “Church” (i.e., religion) encroaches further and further into politics (and thus, matters of the State), I find it interesting that people fight vehemently against the “Church” interfering in the “State,” but in this case, in which the State is clearly interfering with the ability of a faith-based body to determine its future (and simply survive), nary a word of protest – and instead, everyone is gung-ho in allowing State inference in Church business. 🙁
I agree Ian and would go further to say we are getting too used to unopposed mandates, executive orders, forced closures, and in this case forced stay opens.
True. There are times when such things are appropriate, and times when they are not. What amounts to an illegal “taking” of church (or synagogue, or mosque, or…) property, in this case in the form of not allowing the church to demolish its building in order to continue its existence (as well as protecting the public from the dangers of continued disrepair) is inappropriate in every possible way: legally, morally, ethically and spiritually.
“Church business” is a new concept. I agree the State should stay out of Church doctrine. Why should the State not be able to neutrally deal with “Church business” on behalf of its citizens. This is an ugly, useless building which is presently a blight on the neighborhood. I am one citizen in favor of demolition.
Then we are actually in agreement. But when you call “church business” a “new concept,” the “church” is not simply its doctrine. As I have been pointing out (and you seem to be agreeing with), the physical structure that a house of worship uses (it can be a church, a synagogue, a mosque, or anything else owned by the congregation or its governing body) should be the SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE domain of that house of worship. The “State” (in this case, the City via the LPC) – and, yes, even the “community” – should have ZERO say in what is done with that building. Period. It amounts to an improper and illegal “taking.”
Absolutists, and those who think and speak in capitals, are usually wrong. As in this case.
I’m sure you’re smarter than that. The only reason I used capitals is that this system does not allow for italics, bolding or underlining, any one of which would have provided the “stress” I was looking for for those words.
Maybe I should “return” the comment and suggest that pedants are also usually wrong. 😉