For 25 years, the sidewalk shed on the base of West Park Presbyterian Church on Manhattan’s Higher West Aspect has been shielding pedestrians’ heads from fragments of crimson sandstone crumbling off its façade. After many years of monetary difficulties, the church has petitioned New York Metropolis’s Landmarks Preservation Fee (LPC) to permit its demolition, claiming that the constructing’s landmark standing imposes an undue hardship. The transfer has induced uproar, most notably from the Middle at West Park, an arts nonprofit based by the church however evicted final July after years of courtroom battles.
The Middle, the constructing’s supervisor and sole tenant from 2017 to 2024, has hosted resident dance troupes and theatre corporations in addition to reasonably priced areas for arts, sports activities, spiritual and different neighborhood programmes. Within the closing two years, it held greater than 400 public occasions and performances.
Since 2023, the Middle has turned to celebrities to marketing campaign for donations and lift consciousness of the church’s potential demolition. The actor Mark Ruffalo has performed a lead position in assembling well-known associates reminiscent of Scarlett Johansson, Matt Damon, Jon Hamm and Laurence Fishburne to seem at rallies, staged readings and panel discussions.
The hardship provision of the Landmarks Regulation is never invoked; there have been solely 23 purposes in 60 years. To reach its attraction, the church should show, amongst different issues, that it can not earn a “affordable return” (6% of property worth) and that the constructing shouldn’t be appropriate for performing its charitable goal.
Superstar endorsement
At a public listening to on 9 December, these in favour of the hardship software had been outnumbered 5 to at least one. Opposing voices included residents, activists, attorneys, architects, public officers and real-estate consultants who challenge that the leasing of house and the sale of air rights—whereby their switch permits one other website close by to construct larger—would generate income far exceeding the 6% affordable return.
At a subsequent listening to on 10 March, the church stated the entire value of repairs is not less than $26.6m, slightly than the Middle’s estimate of $9.1m. When requested why it has not tried to promote its unused air rights, the church claimed that the market is demand-driven and that there are not any consumers.
Current on the December listening to had been quite a few actors who personal houses within the neighbourhood, together with Ruffalo. “Sure, I’m a star,” he stated. “However behind me are 1,000 younger actors who had been identical to me, who got here to New York on the lookout for a dream, and these areas fulfil that capacity for them to discover a manner into the world.”
Whereas the celebrities backing the Middle largely haven’t any connection to its programming, the one exception is Matt Dillon, who rented an artwork studio on the church for nearly ten years. “All over the place all through the constructing there’s a palpable sense of neighborhood,” he stated on the listening to. “It’s exhausting to consider that anybody would even take into consideration tearing down this lovely landmark. It’s not in the most effective curiosity of town to destroy its historical past.”
Historical past of activism
Accomplished in 1890, the constructing was designed by the architect Henry Kilburn to increase an current chapel. Its Romanesque Revival model, distinguished by its spherical arches and hefty masonry, is shared with dozens of church buildings throughout town. Its tower is topped by a particular bell-shaped roof, and its stained-glass home windows embody a big Nineteen Twenties backlit Tiffany panel depicting Jesus and the kids.
In its 2010 choice to designate West Park a landmark, the LPC famous that “the terribly deep color of its crimson sandstone cladding and the church’s daring types and hovering tower… produce a monumental and distinguished presence”, declaring it “one of many Higher West Aspect’s most necessary buildings”.
West Park has an extended historical past of fostering tradition and activism. In 1978, it turned the primary Presbyterian church within the US to permit LGBTQ+ ministers. Within the Nineteen Eighties, it housed the Shakespeare Middle and the primary kitchen operation of God’s Love We Ship through the Aids disaster.
The church insists that demolition is the one manner out of its monetary woes, which deepened as its congregation dwindled. It bought its manse (minister’s condominium) in 2014 and laid off its pastor, the late Robert Brashear, in 2017.
Brashear, a musician himself, helped arrange the Middle as a secular arts nonprofit that may interact the neighborhood and lift funds for the church. Although the Middle was conceived as an arm of the church, over time it turned a separate entity and an adversary. An settlement to share earnings yielded nothing, and the church needed to bear the majority of upkeep prices.
In 2022, the church signed an settlement to promote its constructing for $33m. The developer proposed constructing a mixed-use property with a luxurious condominium tower, retail house and a 150-seat auditorium to be used by the congregation and the neighborhood. In mid-2023, the Middle employed a brand new govt director with in depth expertise in fundraising, and approached the church providing hundreds of thousands of {dollars} for repairs and $600,000 in shared revenue. After its eviction order, the Middle supplied to pay hire of $30,000 a month (roughly the earlier annual fee) with an choice to buy the constructing for $34m after three years. All proposals had been rejected.
Since leaving West Park, the Middle has moved its workplace and a few programming to the Church of St Paul and St Andrew, two blocks away. Remarkably, the brand new location can be a delegated landmark that claimed hardship, within the Nineteen Eighties. Now, in combating to protect a constructing of which it’s neither proprietor nor tenant, the Middle hopes that West Park’s landmark standing stands and that it may possibly sometime transfer again into its unique house.
