Building of the Day: 260 Quincy Street

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: John Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church, originally Nostrand Avenue M.E. Church
Address: 260 Quincy Street
Cross Streets: Corner Nostrand Avenue
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: 1880-81, Sunday School building, 1891-92
Architectural Style: Gothic Revival, with elements of Shingle and Stick Styles, and English Arts and Crafts
Architect: Parfitt Brothers
Other buildings by architect: Truslow House, CHN; Montague, Grosvenor, and Berkeley Apartments, Bklyn Hts, Mt. Lebanon Church, Stuy Hts; St. Augustine RC Church, and Grace United Methodist Church, Park Slope, among many others.
Landmarked: No, but should be

The story: Not only is Brooklyn’s church stock exceedingly large, it’s also exceedingly good. The Parfitt Brothers, three English-born brothers, were responsible for some of the best church architecture in the city. This church is their most eclectic in style. It was built for the Nostrand Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, which was founded in this location in 1870. Henry, Walter, and youngest brother Albert, were very inventive in designing this very different Gothic Revival Church. There’s a lot of the English Arts and Crafts movement in this design, probably the influence of Albert Parfitt, who came here last, in 1882. He was quite adept in this style that drew from England’s rural past, eschewing baronial and aristocratic materials and design for the more rustic, hand-made and hand-hewn designs. This was part of the whole Arts and Crafts ideal preached and practiced by William Morris, his friends and colleagues.

This is a great church building, with the original church building hugging the corner of Nostrand and Quincy. The large Sunday School building and auditorium was built 10 years later, in 1892. The main church is a collection of Shingle Style dormers which frame a classic auditorium Protestant preaching church. Unlike Catholic, Episcopalian or even some Lutheran churches, Methodists concentrated on the preaching, not the ceremonies and rituals. This type of church needed only a prominent lectern and stage, as well as a large auditorium to hold the congregation. The Parfitt’s more than delivered here.

Note the Arts and Crafts details here: the piling on of steep peaked roofs and dormers, the broad Gothic arches, the wooden bargeboard carved wood trim. The Parfitt’s took advantage of the corner lot to design a church that repeats the design themes at oblique angles equally from side to front to side, mixing brick, wood, terra-cotta and glass. It’s quite a design, and much different than the usual Gothic Revival homages to medieval Gothic.

The John Wesley ME Church is an African-American denomination, with many such congregations across the country and in the Caribbean. This congregation began in 1916, with a gathering of mostly Caribbean congregants from Barbados, in a storefront in Cobble Hill. In 1921, they moved to a former Greek Orthodox church on Pacific Street. As more and more black people moved to Bedford Stuyvesant, the church found itself becoming a commuter church, loosing local membership, and in 1947, they decided to find a new home, moving here, to Nostrand and Quincy, where their congregation was. On their last day on Pacific Street, the entire congregation marched from that location, to Quincy Street, to celebrate in their new home. Because they were from two different branches of the Methodist church, hey had to buy the building. In 1963, they had a mortgage burning ceremony, and the church has thrived for the last 60-plus years as one of Bedford Stuyvesant’s many houses of worship with an active role in feeding, clothing, and educating those who have less. A fine Christmas message, that. GMAP