Weekender: The Green Church Bites the Dust
[nggallery id=”25544″ template=galleryview] Sad. Sad. Sad. And to think that the pastor was the one who sold the church out. Last Days of the Green Church [Flickr via GL] On to the Afterlife for Green Church [Brownstoner] Photos courtesy of Joe Marino
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Sad. Sad. Sad. And to think that the pastor was the one who sold the church out.
Last Days of the Green Church [Flickr via GL]
On to the Afterlife for Green Church [Brownstoner]
Photos courtesy of Joe Marino
Not sure about that legal point. A not for profit must seek approval of the state if it intends to shut down and dispose of its assets. In this case the church sold its asset in order to dedicate the resulting funds to its charitable efforts, under the same corporate name. But not my area of law.
The church was on the National Register of Historic Places, but that alone did not protect it.
Landmark Designation was sought for the church but unfortunately, it was never calandered. (I’m not sure how far it got through the LPC).
Side Note: NYS requires the approval of the local supreme court to sell a church property. It also requires the approval of the NY attorney general.
Somehow, this congregation was able to by-pass this step. Not sure how.
They have not been very forthright with the community.
It’s been a long, hard and very dirty battle between the preservationists and the church.
The implosion of the housing market and hyperdevelopment came just a little too late, things were already in progress.
To answer Tybur’s question – “Why didn’t the community have this building protected by the city years and years ago?” – its because the community would never have dreamed that such protection was even required. Who would even think of demolishing a beautiful old handbuilt gem like this?
Pierre – I am remarkably calm. (BTW my minister was just interviewed on NPR about the completely insane organist our church had as artist in residence for the last year. He was great but played too loud!) Sounds like from your second email that you are willing to grant that there are difficult issues to be grappled with here. Which was exactly my point – and which was not the tenor of the comments prior to me posting.
I bow to the superior knowledge of Italiana et al who say that there were other alternative proposals, and that the pastor refused to meet with community members. Lack of dialogue can often cause situations to seem even worse.
My point, which I believe has now been made ad naseum, is that this wasn’t really one-sided. Thanks for being willing to engage, folks…
P.S. It is too bad about the building. I am sure if I lived near there I would be sad too.
Not to mention the pastor, Mr Emmerick would not even meet with preservationsist of the community to disscuss how important this building was to us. I found it strage that he would not even hear another side to it.
I’m sure that 109 years ago the congregation’s intentions were not to work their butt off getting it built only to have it torn down. Also let’s not forget that many people were resting in peace on the grouds and their tombs and headstones had to be relocated.
You know, Grand Central Station was almost torn down in the 60s because it was privately owned and the owners did not want to repair it. Can you imagine if preservationists did not win the fight, along with Jackie Onasis to save that building? It is one of NYC’s gems. Now I know that the Green Church is not Grand Central but Bay Ridge is not NYC and we’d like to keep the treasures we have as they represent what is great about a neighborhood.
And the way there is a side to this story that rarely gets written about in the press. The demoliton of the church’s rectory, which is attached to a row of limestones is also being torn down. This has the families living next to it bittng their nails as they feel the demolition of a house in their row will render the rest of the townhouses unsafe. Engineers’s swear that it is safe but the failies showed me stories in the NY times where a similiar situation occured and other townhouses simply crumbled. And they asked to meet with pastor to discuss this and he refuses. What a nice pastor, huh?
‘In the end, I am sure the church would have gladly sold the building to a preservationist group if they could have received an equal amount of money.’
There was an offer (about 2 years ago) for the same monetary value, which preserved the church and created senior citizen housing.
There were two offers as of three months ago (again for the same monetary value as offered by the developer) also preserving the church.
What motive does this congregation have for not accepting one of those offers??????????????
It leads to many in the community to believe….that a man of the cloth can be bought.
Putnam please calm down. We never said or implied that architecture is more important so to answer your question NO we don’t believe that. We were only pointing out that the economic decisions here were by far the major factor and “rate limiting step” as you seem to allude to yourself:
“In the end, I am sure the church would have gladly sold the building to a preservationist group if they could have received an equal amount of money. And while we may judge that perhaps they should have been willing to accept less money in order to preserve what seems to have been a wonderful asset to the visual landscape. how much less?”. It is a simple fact the church had to make difficult decisions and they chose to go with the financially more solvent choice which mind you is NOT wrong per se we are only saying that it is not very popular. Inotherwords at this junture for the church the monetary benefits were PARAMOUNT…Yes simple and reductionist but true.
And remember we like old historical buildings but fetishizing a building? Idol worship? Common now that is a severe and frankly silly and mis-directed accusation my dear. We grew up in France were as you know we are exposed to old buildings ad nauseum.
I wonder if the new condo’s will have recessed lighting, central air and parking, because you need parking in Bay Ridge.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion
That building and its followers are of no use to anyone.
If you need faith, have faith in yourself.
Religious moderates are if not the root, the backbone of all evil, because of your acceptance of the radicals.