Building of the Day: 1024 Bergen Street

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Originally Bedford Heights Baptist Chapel, now the Ebenezer Wesleyan Methodist Church
Address: 1024 Bergen Street
Cross Streets: Nostrand and Rogers Avenues
Neighborhood: Crown Heights North
Year Built: 1888
Architectural Style: Romanesque Revival, with Gothic details
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: No

The story: Crown Heights has some very big and impressive churches and synagogues, built in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. These large houses of worship are usually on corners, able to be easily seen, and are commanding presences, and great examples of superior religious architecture, designed by important architects. But there are also smaller churches in the neighborhood; chapels really, tucked into the side streets, many totally invisible until one walks past them. Many of these are little gems, some designed by the finest architects, and some by architects whose names were never recorded. This chapel, built as the Bedford Heights Baptist Chapel, is one of those unknown gems.

The church was organized in 1866 to accommodate Baptists who were now moving into the 24th Ward, that part of Brooklyn considered part of greater Bedford at the time, but now called Crown Heights. Two of the area’s most important Baptist Churches, the Washington Avenue Baptist Church and the Marcy Avenue Baptist Church, joined together to fund this new chapel. It was rumored that Charles Pratt, a faithful member and financial supporter of the Washington Avenue Baptist Church, gave a sizable donation for this endeavor.

The Brooklyn Eagle announced in June of 1888 that the cornerstone of the building would be laid, and in a whirlwind of building, the church itself was dedicated that fall. The Eagle called it “a substantially built structure, brick, trimmed with terra-cotta.” They did not list the architect, and I could find no records of him. It would be interesting if he were William Tubby, a prominent Brooklyn architect with a long standing relationship with Charles Pratt, Pratt Institute, and the Pratt family.

Although it is quite simple, there are some fine details on this building, all done in a very subtle and modest way, but quite good. The brick design in the entrance, the massing of the windows, the asymmetry of the towers, whoever did this, they knew their stuff. The church is basically in the Romanesque Revival style, but has Gothic detailing in the pointed arched windows, and a massing of shapes, classic features of Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne structures.

In 1925, the church passed from the Baptists to the Alliance Tabernacle of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, a Pentecostal Church best known for tent meetings and evangelical services. They were very active throughout the 1920s and 30s, with ads in the newspapers almost every week. They conducted tent revival meetings in parking lots and fields all over Brooklyn, but had to stop in 1944, due to changes in health department regulations. In 1948, the Alliance Tabernacle decided to sell the building and build a larger church building in East Flatbush, on Clarendon Road. Interestingly enough, although it is now a predominantly African American congregation, it was mostly a white congregation until well after their move to Flatbush.

Alliance sold the building to the current owners, the Ebenezer Wesleyan Methodist Church. They also had an interesting history, and have always been a predominantly West Indian congregation. They were founded in 1905 on Johnson Street, in Downtown Brooklyn, which was at the time, where many black Brooklynites lived. These West Indian Methodists wanted to start a church where they could worship as they had done on the Islands. Their first services were held in a building on Myrtle Avenue, that same year.

In the next few years, they would formally incorporate, and move around in the Downtown area, losing their last building there to city planning and highways in the early 20th century. They would move to the Bedford YMCA for a bit, and finally to the old Prosser mansion at 387 Stuyvesant Avenue, at Bainbridge, where they stayed until they bought this building in 1948.

Although not nearly as big, and with nowhere the same number of people as nearby Bedford Presbyterian, or Union United Methodist Church, this Crown Heights North church is still a beautiful addition to the community’s houses of worship. If there is a Phase 4 in the landmarking of Crown Heights North, this building will be protected and celebrated for the historic gem it is. GMAP