Last month's highly unusual decision by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate Manhattan's West-Park Presbyterian Church a local landmark -- over the opposition of its congregation -- has resulted in push-back.It's about money.
The iconic red sandstone building at 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side needs an estimated $5+ million in repairs, and the congregation doesn't have the cash.
Church leaders have lashed out at preservationists and local councilwoman Gale Brewer for blocking their plan to sell part of their property to a developer to generate funds.
The congregation, with the help of the city's broader Presbyterian community, is lobbying the City Council to overturn the LPC's decision to designate the church.
On the Presbytery of New York City's website is posted a set of talking points on the issue, including a form letter from a pastor to a council member that says:
"If you and your fellow City Council members approve the LPC's action, every church, synagogue, mosque, temple and religious institution across the city will not be safe from the actions of marauding preservationists... The LPC's recommendation solely benefits a handful of neighborhood preservation groups who are not members of West-Park's congregation. Brewer is mining the LPC's action for her own personal political gain, calling it 'a victory for the Westside.'"
Marauding preservationists? Word.
West-Park pastor Robert Brashear, echoing Robert Emerick's rhetoric of two years ago in Bay Ridge, huffed that "the government has no right to take away the life of a church to save a building."
The LPC's decision to designate West-Park has astonished preservationists, particularly those, like the Committee to Save the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church, that have lost nearly-identical battles with the LPC.
As in the case of the Green Church, the LPC usually refuses to even calendar buildings for designation hearing over owner opposition, and the city's churches and synagogues are deeply opposed to any restrictions on their right to sell off their property and destroy their historic buildings in order to generate cash.
So what made West-Park special? For one thing, its congregation made the tactical error of allowing it to remain standing for 20 years, giving preservationists time to build an advocacy campaign broad and deep enough to get the handsome Romanesque Revival building landmarked.
Most recently, the cash-strapped congregation had invited developers Related Companies, then Richman Housing, to knock down all or part of the church to build an apartment tower that would have generated $15 million.
West-Park has now been closed, and its congregation has moved temporarily into a neighboring church.
The Presbytery, numbering just 17,000, probably lacks the political juice to undo the LPC's decision in the City Council, which usually defers to the local member on land-use decisions. And Gail Brewer has for years supported landmarking the church.
The Presbytery's next move, assuming the City Council upholds the LPC, would be to invoke the "hardship" process for cash-strapped charitable organizations, as St. Vincent's in Greenwich Village did last year so it could demolish the modernist O'Toole building.
The article from the Observer.
More from DNA.
From DNA, West Park has been put up for sale.
