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 pink sandstone crumbling off its façade. After a long time of economic 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 precipitated uproar, most notably from the Heart at West Park, an arts nonprofit based by the church however evicted final July after years of court docket battles.
The Heart, 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 last two years, it held greater than 400 public occasions and performances.
Since 2023, the Heart 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 function in assembling well-known mates resembling Scarlett Johansson, Matt Damon, Jon Hamm and Laurence Fishburne to look at rallies, staged readings and panel discussions.
The hardship provision of the Landmarks Regulation isn’t invoked; there have been solely 23 functions in 60 years. To achieve its attraction, the church should show, amongst different issues, that it can’t earn a “cheap return” (6% of property worth) and that the constructing is just not appropriate for performing its charitable goal.
Movie star endorsement
At a public listening to on 9 December, these in favour of the hardship software have been outnumbered 5 to at least one. Opposing voices included residents, activists, attorneys, architects, public officers and real-estate specialists who mission that the leasing of area and the sale of air rights—whereby their switch permits one other web site close by to construct increased—would generate income far exceeding the 6% cheap return.
At a subsequent listening to on 10 March, the church mentioned the entire price of repairs is a minimum of $26.6m, fairly than the Heart’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 have been numerous actors who personal houses within the neighbourhood, together with Ruffalo. “Sure, I’m a star,” he mentioned. “However behind me are 1,000 younger actors who have 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 approach into the world.”
Whereas the celebrities backing the Heart largely don’t have any connection to its programming, the one exception is Matt Dillon, who rented an artwork studio on the church for nearly ten years. “In all places all through the constructing there’s a palpable sense of neighborhood,” he mentioned on the listening to. “It’s laborious to consider that anybody would even take into consideration tearing down this lovely landmark. It’s not in one of the best curiosity of the town to destroy its historical past.”
Historical past of activism
Accomplished in 1890, the constructing was designed by the architect Henry Kilburn to develop an present chapel. Its Romanesque Revival model, distinguished by its spherical arches and hefty masonry, is shared with dozens of church buildings throughout the 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 youngsters.
In its 2010 resolution to designate West Park a landmark, the LPC famous that “the terribly deep color of its pink sandstone cladding and the church’s daring kinds and hovering tower… produce a monumental and distinguished presence”, declaring it “one of many Higher West Aspect’s most vital buildings”.
West Park has a protracted historical past of fostering tradition and activism. In 1978, it turned the primary Presbyterian church within the US to permit LGBTQ+ ministers. Within the Eighties, it housed the Shakespeare Heart and the primary kitchen operation of God’s Love We Ship in the course of the Aids disaster.
The church insists that demolition is the one approach out of its monetary woes, which deepened as its congregation dwindled. It bought its manse (minister’s residence) in 2014 and laid off its pastor, the late Robert Brashear, in 2017.
Brashear, a musician himself, helped arrange the Heart as a secular arts nonprofit that may have interaction the neighborhood and lift funds for the church. Although the Heart 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 area and a 150-seat auditorium to be used by the congregation and the neighborhood. In mid-2023, the Heart employed a brand new government director with intensive expertise in fundraising, and approached the church providing tens of millions of {dollars} for repairs and $600,000 in shared revenue. After its eviction order, the Heart supplied to pay lease of $30,000 a month (roughly the earlier annual charge) with an choice to buy the constructing for $34m after three years. All proposals have been rejected.
Since leaving West Park, the Heart 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 chosen landmark that claimed hardship, within the Eighties. Now, in combating to protect a constructing of which it’s neither proprietor nor tenant, the Heart hopes that West Park’s landmark standing stands and that it will possibly sometime transfer again into its unique dwelling.
